Difference between revisions of "CSC103: DT's Notes 1"
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Shannon knew of the need for calculators (human beings or machines) around the time of the second world-war, (the need was particularly great for machines that would compute tables of possible trajectories for shells fired from canons). He also knew of efforts by various groups in universities to build calculating machines using electricity and relays, and also of early experiments with vacuum tubes (which later replaced the relays). Because the machines used electricity and switches, the binary system with only two values, 0 and 1 was an appealing system to consider and exploit. But there was still an engineering gap in figuring out how to create circuits that would perform arithmetic operations on binary numbers in an efficient way. | Shannon knew of the need for calculators (human beings or machines) around the time of the second world-war, (the need was particularly great for machines that would compute tables of possible trajectories for shells fired from canons). He also knew of efforts by various groups in universities to build calculating machines using electricity and relays, and also of early experiments with vacuum tubes (which later replaced the relays). Because the machines used electricity and switches, the binary system with only two values, 0 and 1 was an appealing system to consider and exploit. But there was still an engineering gap in figuring out how to create circuits that would perform arithmetic operations on binary numbers in an efficient way. | ||
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| + | Also known at the time was the fact that Boolean logic was easy to implement with electrical systems. For example, creating a ''code'' system where a switch can represent the values of '''True''' or '''False''' is easy, as illustrated in the figure below, in the first (1) panel. | ||
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| + | <center>[[Image:CSC103ElectricalAndOrCircuits.png|500px]]</center> | ||
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In his thesis, Shannon presented the missing link, the bridge that would allow electrical/electronic computers to perform arithmetic computation. He demonstrated that if one were to map '''True''' and '''False''' values to '''1''' and '''0''' of the binary system, then the rules of arithmetic because logic rules. That mean adding two integers because a problem in logic, where assertions are either true or false. | In his thesis, Shannon presented the missing link, the bridge that would allow electrical/electronic computers to perform arithmetic computation. He demonstrated that if one were to map '''True''' and '''False''' values to '''1''' and '''0''' of the binary system, then the rules of arithmetic because logic rules. That mean adding two integers because a problem in logic, where assertions are either true or false. | ||
Revision as of 12:20, 5 February 2012
--© D. Thiebaut 08:10, 30 January 2012 (EST)
