ABSTRACT
It is widely thought that one Claude Elwood Shannon, who died at the age of 84 in 2001, singlehandedly laid the foundation for what became known as information theory, that branch of mathe-
matics concerning the transmission of data in a digital form. In what has been called the most important Masters Thesis of the twentieth century, A Symbolic
Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits, published in 1938, he first put forward the notion that it was possible to solve problems simply by manipulating two symbols – one and zero – in an automated
electrical circuit. Later, in his work A Mathematical Theory of Communication, he first coined the term ‘bit’ as the
fundamental unit of information which encapsulates digital certainty as in true or false, on or off, yes
or no. He was also the first to show how to design circuits to store and manipulate bits. It was Shannon who set in motion the route to the compact disc, cyberspace, digital television and the digital movie camera.
