著者

SUGIMOTO Mai

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

Historia scientiarum. Second series : international journal of the History of Science Society of Japan (ISSN:02854821)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.23, no.1, pp.1-23, 2013-07-31

参考文献数

5

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This paper explores how Edmund C. Berkeley tried to instruct and popularize high-speed computers in the 1940s and 1950s and how Berkeley emphasized the connection between computers and symbolic logic. Berkeley strengthened his conviction in the significance of symbolic logic and Boolean algebra before his graduation from Harvard University and maintained this conviction for more than 30 years. Berkeley published books and articles, including Giant Brains, and sold electrical toy kits by which yound boys could learn electrical circuits and their logical implications. The target audience of Berkeley covered wide range of people including those who were not making computers but were interested in using them, that is, amateur adults technology enthusiasts who enjoyed tinkering with technology or reading about science and technology, and young students. In these projects Berkeley used Shannon's paper of 1938, "A symbolic analysis of relay and switching circuits" as a theoretical basis of his conviction. Design of these kits was fine-tuned by Claude E. Shannon.