1847 AD to 1854 AD |
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| Around the same time that Charles Babbage was struggling with his Analytical Engine, one of his contemporaries, a British mathematician called George Boole, was busily inventing a new and rather cunning form of mathematics. | Boole made significant contributions in several areas of mathematics, but was immortalized for two works in 1847 and 1854, in which he represented logical expressions in a mathematical form now known as Boolean Algebra. Boole's work was all the more impressive because, with the exception of elementary school and a short time in a commercial school, he was almost completely self-educated. | |
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| In conjunction with Boole, another British mathematician, Augustus DeMorgan, formalized a set of logical operations now known as DeMorgan transformations. As the Encyclopedia Britannica says: "A renascence of logical studies came about almost entirely because of Boole and DeMorgan." | ||
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| In fact the rules we now attribute to DeMorgan were known in a more primitive form by William of Ockham (also known as William of Occam) in the 14th Century. In order to celebrate Ockham's position in history, the OCCAM computer programming language was named in his honor. (In fact, OCCAM is the native programming language for the British- developed INMOS transputer.) | Unfortunately, with the exception of students of philosophy and symbolic logic, Boolean Algebra was destined to remain largely unknown and unused for the better part of a century, until a young student called Claude E. Shannon recognized its relevance to electronics design. |
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| These notes are abstracted from the book Bebop BYTES Back (An Unconventional Guide to Computers) Copyright Information |
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