On the Shoulders of Giants: From Boole to Shannon to Taube: The Origins and Development of Computerized Information from the Mid-19th Century to the Present. (1993)

This article describes the evolvement of computerized information storage and retrieval, from its beginnings in the theoretical works on logic by George Boole in the mid-nineteenth century, to the application of Boole's logic to switching circuits by Claude Shannon in the late 1930s, and the development of coordinate indexing by Mortimer Taube in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Thus, electronic storage and retrieval of information, as we know it today, was the result of two major achievements: the advancement of computer technology initiated to a large extent by the work of Shannon, and the development of coordinate indexing and retrieval by the work of Taube. Both these achievements are based on and are the application of the theoretical works of George Boole. The theoretical framework upon which electronic information is based was conceptualized some 150 years ago, in an 1854 work of a self-taught English mathematician, George Boole.[1] His work lay dormant until the advent of communication systems in the first part of the twentieth century, when, in 1938, it was found to be applicable to switching circuits and networks and, later, to information storage and retrieval. In that fashion, Boole's nineteenth-century classic became the cornerstone of computer sciences and information technologies of the twentieth century and the major work upon which future achievements in the field were based. Boole's premature genius is not alone in the history of scientific progress. Some of the world's greatest discoveries and inventions were untimely at their inception. They were either unrecognized, unappreciated, or flatly refuted until some future date when the intellectual, scientific, and other environmental conditions became ripe and receptive to new ideas. Such was the case, for example, of the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, whose revolutionary theory of 1514, placing the sun at the center of the universe, faced great resistance from scientific and church authorities.[2] The theory was not fully accepted until some 150 years after Copernicus' death in 1543, when it paved the way for modem astronomy as well as advances in other physical sciences. Or take the British physician William Harvey, whose work on the circulation of blood published in 1628 made him famous during his lifetime, but was not accepted by the medical establishment until after his death in 1657.[3] Another genius was Gregor Mendel, whose experiments on inheritance traits in garden peas generated no interest during his lifetime. His novel approach, utilizing statistics mathematical formulas in explaining heredity, was neither understood nor given recognition by the scientific establishment. Mendel presented his findings in 1865 at two meetings of the Natural Science Society of Brno, located in what is now the Czech Republic. The minutes of the meetings indicate that although about forty botanists were in attendance, nobody asked Mendel any questions, nor did any discussion follow his presentation. His science contemporaries listened politely to his papers, but there is no indication that anyone really understood what he was talking about or appreciated the significance and the far-reaching effects of his studies. His work, though, was included in the Catalogue of Scientific Literature published in England in 1879, and scholars did make references to it occasionally.[4] It was not until 1909, when his studies were duplicated and confirmed by others, that he was given the title Father of Genetics. From that point on, the whole science of genetics and all future genetic discoveries had origins in his works. And so we come to Isaac Newton, one of the greatest scientific geniuses, if not the greatest. Newton once wrote, If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.[5] That statement portrays the process of scientific progress and Newton's indebtedness to men such as Kepler, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Copernicus, and others. …