From SOPHIA RARE BOOKS, Koebenhavn V, Denmark
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THE INVENTION OF INFORMATION THEORY. First edition, journal issue, of "the most famous work in the history of communication theory" (Origins of Cyberspace, 880), and rare in such fine condition. "Probably no single work in this century has more profoundly altered man's understanding of communication than C. E. Shannon's article, 'A mathematical theory of communication', first published in1948" (Slepian). "Th[is] paper gave rise to 'information theory', which includes metaphorical applications in very different disciplines, ranging from biology to linguistics via thermodynamics or quantum physics on the one hand, and a technical discipline of mathematical essence, based on crucial concepts like that of channel capacity, on the other" (DSB). On the first page of the paper is the first appearance of the term 'bit' for 'binary digit.' "A half century ago, Claude Shannon published his epic paper 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication.' This paper [has] had an immense impact on technological progress, and so on life as we now know it . One measure of the greatness of the [paper] is that Shannon's major precept that all communication is essentially digital is now commonplace among the modern digitalia, even to the point where many wonder why Shannon needed to state such an obvious axiom" (Blahut & Hajek). "In 1948 Shannon published his most important paper, entitled 'A mathematical theory of communication'. This seminal work transformed the understanding of the process of electronic communication by providing it with a mathematics, a general set of theorems rather misleadingly called information theory. The information content of a message, as he defined it, has nothing to do with its inherent meaning, but simply with the number of binary digits that it takes to transmit it. Thus, information, hitherto thought of as a relatively vague and abstract idea, was analogous to physical energy and could be treated like a measurable physical quantity. His definition was both self-consistent and unique in relation to intuitive axioms. To quantify the deficit in the information content in a message he characterized it by a number, the entropy, adopting a term from thermodynamics. Building on this theoretical foundation, Shannon was able to show that any given communications channel has a maximum capacity for transmitting information. The maximum, which can be approached but never attained, has become known as the Shannon limit. So wide were its repercussions that the theory was described as one of humanity's proudest and rarest creations, a general scientific theory that could profoundly and rapidly alter humanity's view of the world. Few other works of the twentieth century have had a greater impact; he altered most profoundly all aspects of communication theory and practice" (Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, Vol. 5, 2009). Remarkably, Shannon was initially not planning to publish the paper, and did so only at the urging of colleagues at Bell Laboratories. This journal issue of Shannon's great work precedes, and is rarer in commerce than, the Bell Telephone System Technical Publications Monograph (#B-1598:1948), the first separate publication. No offprints of the BSTJ articles offered here are known. Provenance: Regnar Svensson (ownership signature to front wrappers). Svensson was employed by the Dansk Industri Syndikat, a defence manufacturer in Copenhagen. "Relying on his experience in Bell Laboratories, where he had become acquainted with the work of other telecommunication engineers such as Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley, Shannon published in two issues of the Bell System Technical Journal his paper 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication.' The general approach was pragmatic; he wanted to study 'the savings due to statistical structure of the original message' (p. 379), and for that purpose, he had to neglect the semantic aspects of information, as Hartley did for 'intelligence' twenty years before. For Shannon, the. Seller Inventory # 6187
Bibliographic Details
Title: 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication,' pp...
Publisher: American Telephone and Telegraph Company, New York
Publication Date: 1948
Edition: First edition.
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