Shannon, Claude E. [Elwood]; McCarthy, J. (editor with Shannon)
[1 (title page)], [1 (blank verso)], 157-165, [3 (blank)] pages. 10 x 7 inches. Stapled printed self-wrappers, with leaves trimmed at the spine. Light staining at foreedge The construction of this item is unusual. It consists of separate leaves of the printed paper in the original journal fonts, with a new title page "AUTOMATA STUDIES" (blank verso) and an added trailing blank leaf, all stapled at the spine. All examined copies from Shannon's files are the same, leading us to conclude it was likely an author offprint even though a reprint statement is not present. Wraps. Originally printed as an internal Bell Laboratories Memorandum: Number 54-114-38, May 15, 1954. "Automata Studies," Annals of Mathematics Studies number 34, 1956 (edited by Claude Shannon and John McCarthy), first published this Shannon paper as "A Universal Turing Machine With Two Internal States" on pages 157-165. "Our main result is to show that a universal Turing machine can be constructed using one tape and having only two internal states. It will also be shown that it is impossible to do this with one internal state. Finally, a construction is given for a universal Turing machine with only two tape symbols." (p 158 of introduction) "A Turing machine which, by appropriate programming using a finite length of input tape, can act as any Turing machine whatsoever. In his seminal paper, Turing himself gave the first construction for a universal Turing machine (Turing 1937, 1938). Shannon (1956) showed that two colors were sufficient, so long as enough states were used. [ as here ]" Wolfram Mathworld PROVENANCE: The personal files of Claude E. Shannon (unmarked). There were multiple examples of this item in Shannon's files. REFERENCES: Sloane and Wyner, "Claude Elwood Shannon Collected Papers," #93.
Zubrin, Robert M. ; Zubrin, Maggie (editors)
First Edition. Three volumes, each 9 1/2 x 7 inches in publisher's pictorial wrappers. Part I: xii, 378, [4 (ads)] pages. Part II: xxii, [379]-759, [1 (blank)], [4 (ads)] pages. Part III: xii, [761]-1133, [1 (blank)], [4 (ads)] pages. As new copies noting just a touch of color fading in a few places. Wraps. The Proceedings of the Founding Convention of the Mars Society held August 13-16, 1998, Boulder Colorado.
Shannon, Claude E. [Elwood]
Later printing. [1], [1-blank], 256-275 pages. 10 7/8 x 8 3/8 inches. A reproduced copy of the original Philosophical Magazine printed on regular sized paper. Stapled upper left corner. Mild corner wear, otherwise a nice clean copy. Wraps. This paper was first presented at the National IRE Convention, March 9, 1949, in New York. "The Philosophical Magazine," Ser. 7, Vol 41, March 1950 (pp. 256-275) first published this paper. Offered here as a reproduced copy of the original offprint, from Shannon's files. Levy, in his "Computer Chess Compendium," states, "This chapter serves as a historical introduction to the remainder of the volume. The very first paper, Shannon's seminal work dating back to 1949 [ Paper 1.1 in Levy's book ], was first presented as a lecture on March 9th of that year to the National Convention of the Institute of Radio Engineers in New York. Shannon pioneered computer chess as we know it today, and his ideas have been employed in almost every chess program ever written." (introduction) "The first technical paper on computer chess." (Origins of Cyberspace) "In their paper on 'Chess-playing programs and the problem of complexity,' Newell, Shaw, and Simon had this to say about Shannon's paper: 'The relevant history [of chess-playing programs] begins with a paper by Claude Shannon in 1949. He did not present a particular chess program but discussed many of the basic problems involved. The framework he introduces has guided most of the subsequent analysis of the problem . The basic framework introduced by Shannon for thinking about chess problems consists of a series of questions: 1. Alternatives. Which alternative moves are to be considered? 2. Analysis. a. Which continuations are to be explored and to what depth? b. How are positions to be evaluated strategically - in terms of their patterns? c. How are the static evaluations to be integrated into a single value for an alternative? 3. Final choice procedure. What procedure is to be used to select the final preferred move? We would hazard that Shannon's paper is chiefly remembered for the specific answers he proposed to these questions: consider all alternatives; search all continuations to a fixed depth, n; evaluate with a numerical sum; minimax to get the effective value for an alternative; and then pick the best one (Newell and Simon, 1963 p 42-44)" (Origins of Cyberspace quoting Feigenbaum pp 39-70) PROVENANCE: The personal files of Claude E. Shannon. There were multiple examples of this item in Shannon's files. REFERENCES: Sloane and Wyner, "Claude Elwood Shannon Collected Papers," #54 Hook and Norman, "Origins of Cyberspace," #882 Levy, David: "Computer Chess Compendium," Springer-Verlag: 1988. (Paper 1.1) Feigenbaum, E. A. and Feldman, J. "Computers and Thought" (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963).
[Dungeons and Dragons]
Later printing. 316,[4] pages. Publisher's pictorial boards. Upper corners bumped, otherwise a very nice copy. Boards. Although the edition is unmarked, this is referred to as the fifth edition of this classic beloved handbook. The cover is a fiery scene illustrated by Tyler Jacobson of the fire giant King Snurre, suffering no fools to live. Covers creating a character, playing the game, the rules of magic, and adds five appendices on conditions, gods of the multiverse, the planes of existence, creature statistics, and inspirational reading. Also contains an index and character sheet at the end. The fifth edition was first published in August 2014. This is the tenth reprinting from October 2018.
Shannon, C. E. [Claude Elwood]
[1]-6 leaves. 10 7/8 x 8 3/8 inches. Reproduced typescript, stapled upper left. Dated in type on the last page. Wraps. The "Report of Proceedings, Symposium on Information Theory" (London) first published this paper in Sept. 1950." The "Transactions of the IRE Professional Group on Information Theory" reprinted it in Volume: 1, Issue: 1, Feb. 1953, pages 102-104, Feb. 1953. We are not aware of offprints from either publication. Offered here is a reproduced typescript of the paper from Shannon's file predating the first publication. We have not compared it to the published papers. Shannon defines a typical communication system as consisting of five elements: 1) an information source. 2) an encoding or transmitting element. 3) a channel on which the signal is transmitted from transmitter to receiver. 4) a receiving and decoding device that recovers the original message from the received signal. And 5) the destination of the information. From the Abstract: ".The central problems to be considered are how one can measure the capacity of a channel for transmitting information; how this capacity depends on various parameters such as bandwidth, available transmitter power and type of noise; and what is the best encoding system for a given information source to utilize a channel most efficiently." PROVENANCE: The personal files of Claude E. Shannon (unmarked). One of three examples in Shannon's files. REFERENCES: Sloane and Wyner, "Claude Elwood Shannon Collected Papers," #61.
Shannon, Claude E. [Elwood]
Later printing. 115-130 pages plus wrappers. 234 x 188 mm. (9 1/4 x 6 5/8 inches). Printed light green printed wrappers. Tanned pages, light browning to the extremities. Lower left corner bumped. Reprinted by kind permission of the Author and the Editors from the Proceedings of the I.R.E. October 1953." Wraps. First published in the famous "Computer Issue" of the Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers (Vol. 41, 1953, pp. 1234-1241), we are unaware of any IRE offprints of this paper. Thus the Bell Telephone System Monograph series (#2150: March 1954) constitutes the first separate appearance. Reprinted in Methodos [as here], Vol. 6 (1954), pp. 115-130. The Methodos reprint lacks both the sample checker program game and notes by Strachey. Methodos was a quarterly serial issued by the "Centro italiano di metodologia e analisi del linguaggio" [Italian Center for Language Methodology and Analysis] which survived from 1949-1964, 16 volumes, Numbers 1 thru 62. (OCLC Acc#: 1695345) "This paper reviews briefly some of the recent developments in the field of automata and nonnumerical computation. A number of typical machines are described, including logic machines, game-playing machines, and learning machines. Some theoretical questions and developments are discussed, such as a comparison of computers and the brain, Turing's formulation of computing machines, and von Neumann's models of self-reproducing machines." (summary, p 130). "A brief review of developments in the field of automata and non-numerical computation. Included are descriptions of logic machines, game-playing machines, learning machines, Turing's formulation of computing machines, and von Neumann's models of self-reproducing machines. The paper was written for the special computer issue of the Proceedings of the IRE." (Origins of Cyberspace) In his review of this article for The Journal of Symbolic Logic (Vol 19), Alonzo Church describes it as ".an excellent descriptive non-technical article." PROVENANCE: The personal files of Claude E. Shannon (unmarked). There were seven examples of this item in Shannon's files. REFERENCES: Sloane and Wyner, "Claude Elwood Shannon Collected Papers," #82 Hook and Norman, "Origins of Cyberspace," #885.
611-644 pages. 10 1/16 x 6 3/4 inches. Stapled self-wrappers. Creased, some minor soiling. Wraps. The Proceedings of the Fourth Berkeley Symposium Probability and Statistics first published this paper. The construction of this item leaves us a little unsure of its intended use. It could be an offprint, but it lacks the usual separate wrapper or reprint statement. It could also be stapled, trimmed extracts from the Symposium's preprints or transactions. The layout and details appear the same as the digitalized Proceedings. Regardless, it is the form of the paper that Shannon was distributing when requested. Lacking any additional information, and realizing it was in the author's personal files, we lean toward it being an offprint for the author's use. ".The problem is to communicate in both directions through the channel as effectively as possible. Particularly, we wish to determine what pairs of signaling rates R1 and R2 for the two directions can be approached with arbitrarily small error probabilities." (introduction) PROVENANCE: The personal files of Claude E. Shannon (unmarked). There were multiple examples of this item in Shannon's files. REFERENCES: Sloane and Wyner, "Claude Elwood Shannon Collected Papers," #119 Hook and Norman, "Origins of Cyberspace," #899 Reprinted in D. Slepian, editor, "Key Papers in the Development of Information Theory," IEEE Press, NY, 1974, pp 339-372 Proceedings Fourth Berkeley Symposium Probability and Statistics, June 20 - July 30, 1960, edited by J. Neyman, Univ. Calif. Press, Berkeley, CA, Vol. 1, 1961, pp. 611-644.
337-354 pages. 9 15/16 x 6 7/8 inches. Publisher's pale green printed wrappers. Stapled near the spine (several rust stains). Soft crease to upper right corners. Wraps. The Journal of Mathematics and Physics, Vol XX, No. 4, December 1941, first published this paper. Here offered in offprint form. As he was completing his undergraduate work in Michigan, Shannon noticed [a note tacked to a bulletin board] in the spring of 1936 "just as he was considering what was to come after his undergraduate days were over. The job - master's student and assistant on the differential analyzer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - was tailor-made for a young man who could find equal joy in equations and construction, thinking, and building. 'I pushed hard for that job and got it. That was one of the luckiest things of my life,' Shannon would later say.Shannon's study of the electrical switches directing the guts of that mechanical behemoth led him to an insight at the foundation of our digital age: that switches could do far more than control the flow of electricity through circuits - that they could be used to evaluate any logical statement we could think of, could even appear to 'decide'.That leap, as Walter Isaacson put it, 'became the basic concept underlying all digital computers.' It was Shannon's first great feat of abstraction. He was only twenty-one." (Mind at Play, xii, xiii, 20) In 1938 in his monumental master's thesis "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits," Shannon published that leap. A few years later, he published the mathematical theory behind the Differential Analyzer [as here] in some detail. "The Differential Analyzer is a machine developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the direction of Dr. V. [Vannevar] Bush for the purpose of obtaining numerical solutions to ordinary differential equations. The fundamental principles underlying the Differential Analyzer were first conceived by Lord Kelvin, but at the time, it was impossible, due to mechanical difficulties, to construct a machine of the type he contemplated. The same principles were discovered independently by Dr. Bush and his associates, and the first Differential Analyzer was completed in 1931. The inherent mechanical difficulties were overcome by means of several ingenious devices such as torque amplifiers, backlash correcting units, and improved machine working technologies . In this paper, the mathematical aspects of the Differential Analyzer will be considered. The most important results deal with conditions under which functions of one or more variables can be generated and conditions under which ordinary differential equations can be solved. Some attention will also be given to approximation of functions (which cannot be generated exactly), approximation of gear ratios, and automatic speed control" (Introduction, pp 337-338) PROVENANCE: The personal files of Claude E. Shannon (unmarked). There were multiple examples of this item in Shannon's files. REFERENCES: Sloane and Wyner, "Claude Elwood Shannon Collected Papers," #6 Soni and Goodman, "A Mind at Play - How Claude Shanon Invented the Information Age," Simon and Schuster: 2017.
90-93 pages. 10 x 7 1/8 inches. A single sheet folded but lacking the original blue printed wrappers. Wraps. The American Mathematical Monthly first published this article in Vol 57, (Feb. 1950), pp 90-93. We offer here the original offprint issue but without the original blue printed wrappers. While we don't understand the mathematics here, one comment is fun: "If we were using this notation, department stores would find it much more difficult to camouflage the price of goods with $.98 labels." The typescript carbon in Shannon's files finishes there. But the final paper [ as offered here ] includes additional material, including a final paragraph explaining one reason for this notation: "Symmetrical notation offers attractive possibilities for general-purpose computing machines of the electronic or relay types. In these machines, it is possible to perform the calculations in any desired scale and only translate to the scale ten at input and output. The use of asymmetrical notation simplifies many of the circuits required to take care of signs in addition and subtraction, and to properly round off numbers." (p.93) "At the close of the decade, the [American Mathematical] Monthly published a beautiful, long paper by Andre Weil called the Future of Mathematics. It also published a short note in computer science by Claude Shannon called "A Symmetrical Notation for Numbers." Both papers foretold the future of mathematics." (Ewing, p. 134) PROVENANCE: The personal files of Claude E. Shannon (unmarked). There were multiple examples of this item in Shannon's files. REFERENCES: Sloane and Wyner, "Claude Elwood Shannon Collected Papers," #57 Ewing, John H., "A Century of Mathematics : Through the Eyes of the Monthly", p.134, 201-204.
Later printing. xv, [1], 105, [1] pages. Dark papered boards (gilt titles) over a white cloth spine. A sound copy, noting lower corner tips worn. Boards. "George Ellery Hale (June 29, 1868 - February 21, 1938) was an American astrophysicist, best known for his discovery of magnetic fields in sunspots, and as the leader or key figure in the planning or construction of several world-leading telescopes; namely, the 40-inch refracting telescope at Yerkes Observatory, 60-inch Hale reflecting telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory, 100-inch Hooker reflecting telescope at Mount Wilson, and the 200-inch Hale reflecting telescope at Palomar Observatory. He played a key role in the foundation of the International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research and the National Research Council, and in developing the California Institute of Technology into a leading research university. " (Wikipedia).
Later printing. 46, [2-blank] pages. 10 7/8 x 8 3/8 inches (275 x 213 mm) Original wrappers, printed in grey, light blue, and black. Stapled with five holes punched at the spine as issued. A bright, clean copy. Wraps. The Bell System Technical Journal, Vol 38, pp 611-656, May 1959 first published this paper. A separate Bell System Technical Journal offprint of this paper does exist, so this Bell Telephone System Technical Publications Monograph (#3259:July 1959) is a later printing. "A study is made of coding and decoding systems for a continuous channel with an additive gaussian noise and subject to an average power limitation at the transmitter. Upper and lower bounds are found for the error probability in decoding with optimal codes and decoding systems. These bounds are close together for signaling rates near channel capacity and also for signaling rates near zero, but diverge between. Curves exhibiting these bounds are given." (abstract) PROVENANCE: The personal files of Claude E. Shannon (unmarked). There were multiple examples of this item in Shannon's files. REFERENCES: Sloane and Wyner, "Claude Elwood Shannon Collected Papers," #117 Hook and Norman, "Origins of Cyberspace," #898 (incorrectly referencing this item as an offprint) COLLECTORS NOTE: The Bell Telephone System Monograph series offered a way to obtain individual articles by Bell scientists regardless of where their work was first published. Many Monographs significantly postdate the original article publication. Because of this, they rarely constitute the coveted (and traditional) article offprint. If the journal of record issued no offprint, the Monograph might be the first separate publication - the closest the collector can come to a traditional offprint. We have done our best to place each Monograph properly in the article's publishing history and welcome any corrections or additional information, especially regarding issues unknown to us.
First Edition. [10], 13-178 pages. 7 1/4 x 5 1/2 inches. Publisher's blue cloth. Titles in gilt, lotus decoration on front board. Worn to the extremities, spine faded. Front hinge cracked but sound, Occasional scratch impression to the paper, several leaves with marginal loss upper corner (no loss of text). A read but sound copy. Cloth. Printed by the Gorham Press, Boston, U.S.A. "The dialect poems are the result of a childhood spent at Rosedale Plantation, north Louisiana, and of later observations of negro characteristics in small towns, whereas California, in which state the writer has resided for the past six years, has proved a fount of inspiration. The panorama of sea, sky, fog, cloud, islands, and mountas that enwraps San Francisco might well inspire a prose writer to poetic musings, which extended journeys, throughout the Gold State have emphasized in the case of the author, who tentatively presents Lyrics from Lotus Lands to the public." (foreword).
Later printing. [1]-11, 12 pages. 10 7/8 x 8 3/8 inches. Copied loose leaves stapled upper left. A later generation copy the MIT Preprint of the AIEE paper. Copy quality is not ideal, but it is readable and a copy from Shannon's personal files. Wraps. We offer a later generation copy of the previously unrecorded MIT preprint of Claude Shannon's AIEE paper "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits," a pivotal paper in the history of computing. (see #1.5 in COLLECTOR'S NOTES). This paper (often referred to as Shannon's famous Master's Thesis) is a fundamentally important work in the history of computing. It demonstrates how to combine the mathematical rigor of Boolean logic with the engineering practice of building circuits, a discipline previously more of an experimental art form than a true engineering discipline. This work provided the foundation for computer circuit design as we know it today, without which the phenomenal growth of computing (see Moore's Law) could not have happened. "In 1936 [after obtaining the degrees of Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Bachelor of Science in Mathematics at the University of Michigan, Shannon] accepted the position of research assistant in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The position allowed him to continue studying toward advanced degrees while working part-time for the department. The work in question was ideally suited to his interests and talents. It involved the operation of the Bush differential analyzer, the most advanced calculating machine of that era . Also of interest was a complex relay circuit associated with the differential analyzer that controlled its operation and involved over one hundred relays. In studying and servicing this circuit, Shannon became interested in the theory and design of relay and switching circuits. He had studied symbolic logic and Boolean algebra at Michigan in mathematics courses and realized that this was the appropriate mathematics for studying such two-valued systems. He developed these ideas during the summer of 1937, which he spent at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City, and, back at MIT, in his master's thesis, where he showed how Boolean algebra could be used in the analysis and synthesis of switching and computer circuits." (Sloane and Wyner pp xi-xii) The American Institute of Electrical Engineers recognized the significance of Shannon's thesis and invited the young Claude Shannon, an "Enrolled Student AIEE," to present an abstract of his thesis at the June 1938 Summer AIEE conference while still enrolled at MIT. "The thesis, his first published paper, aroused considerable interest when it appeared in 1938 in the AIEE Transactions. In 1940, it was awarded the [1939] Alfred Noble Prize of the combined engineering societies of the United States, an award given each year to a person, not over thirty, for a paper published in one of the journals of the participating societies." (Sloane and Wyner, pp. xi-xii). Herman H. Goldstine notes: "This surely must be one of the most important master's theses ever written.The paper was a landmark in that it helped change digital circuit design from an art to a science." (Goldstine, pp 119-120) "Shannon's paper, written in 1937 at Bell Labs, proved in theory what George Stibitz was demonstrating empirically at Bell Labs at just about the same time with his famous 'Model K' relay calculator.Shannon proved that the two-valued algebra developed by George Boole . could be implemented electrically by telephone relays and used as a basis for designing computer circuits." (Origins of Cyberspace) PROVENANCE: The personal files of Claude E. Shannon (unmarked). One of ten examples in Shannon's files. REFERENCES: (citing the regular AIEE Transactions publication) Sloane and Wyner, "Claude Elwood Shannon Collected Papers," #1 Hook and Norman, "Origins of Cyberspace," #363. Swartzlander, Earl E. Jr., "Computer Design Development, Principal Papers," Hayden: 1976. Goldstine, Herman H., "The Computer from Pascal to Von Neumann," Princeton University Press: 1980, pp 119-120. COLLECTOR NOTES: Below is our current understanding of the printing history of "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits." Except for Item 1.1a we have personally examined one or more examples (digitally or physically) of each entry. Please note the change of item 1.3 to item 1.1a in the listing based on new information from the current owner of that item. Pre-publication - Master's thesis (note change since our first Shannon catalog) 1.0 The original markup copy, dated 1937 (private collection) 1.1a Unknown duplication process with penciled annotations in an unknown hand (private collection, previously referred to as 1.3) 1.1b A preliminary blue line print, dated 1938, contemporary with and probably made from 1.1a (private collection - your example, previously 1.1) 1.2 The official MIT Libraries archive copy, dated 1940 (MIT Libraries) 1.3 no copy - Previously "The second MIT Libraries archive copy" (now number 1.1a above) While working on his MIT Master's Thesis, Shannon was invited to and presented his work at the Summer conference of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, June 2-24, 1938. The following publication history is related to that presentation. Publication - Shannon's AIEE thesis presentation 1.4 AIEE presentation preprint, dated June 1938 Marked "AIEE Technical Paper 38-80, June 1938: Advance Copy Not Released for Publication" and further "A paper recommended by the AIEE committees on communication and basic sciences, and scheduled for presentation at the AIEE summer convention, Washington, D. C., June 20-24, 1938. Manuscript submitted March 1, 1938; made available for preprinting May 27, 1938." Shannon thanks his thesis advisor Dr. F. L. Hitchcock, Dr. Vannevar Bush, and Dr. S. H. Caldwell (all from MIT) for "helpful encouragement and criticism." 1.5 MIT preprint of 1.6 below, dated Septe