today special:-Claude Shannon b day

claude shannon:-

Three things you'll wish you owned that Claude Shannon invented

As well as inventing microcomputers, and developing theories that led to the digital revolution, this American mathematician also had a frivolous side, building a machine that could solve a Rubik's Cube

Shannon with his magnetic mouse that could find its way around a maze GETTY

In its time the Google Doodle has celebrated mathematicians such as John Venn, George Boole and Hertha Marks Ayrton - as well codebreaker Alan Turing, the 100th anniversary of whose birth was 23 June 2012.

Now it is the turn of Claude Shannon, who worked with Turing on Allied codebreaking during the Second World War - not at Bletchley Park, but in Washington, where Turing had been seconded in 1943 to bring the US up to speed with British cryptanalytic developments. Shannon was four years younger, 26 to Turing's 30.

Although Shannon's war-time work was crucial to the Allied effort, he did devote some of his energies to more frivolous projects.

Juggling robot

In the 1070s, Shannon built the world's first juggling robot, using an Erector Set (the equivalent of a Mecanno set). The robot, which was built to look like the Vaudevillian and film comedian WC Fields, was able to juggle three balls at one time - but bounced and caught them, rather than throwing them in the air and catching them.

Ultimate Machine

Shannon built what he called the Ultimate Machine, which he kept on his desk. It was a simple box with a single switch on it that, when you pressed, opened the box's lid to reveal a mechanical hand that reached out, flipped off the switch, and then pulled itself back inside its box, rather like a reclusive Jack-in-the-box. Sci-fi writer Arthur C Clarke saw Shannon's machine and wrote: "There is something unspeakably sinister about a machine that does nothing - absolutely nothing - except switch itself off."

posted by :-krishnakumar

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