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In 1948, mathematician and Gaylord native Claude Shannon theorized that information could be transmitted using ones and zeros.
The small-town northern Michigander’s research helped develop the internet, wireless phones and artificial intelligence. According to the New York Times, Anthropic’s AI model Claude is an homage to him.
Known as the “father of information,” Shannon “established the basic methods and technology that enabled logic design for electronic circuits and formed the backbone of all the electronic digital electronics that we have,” said Alfred Hero, a computer science and electrical engineering professor at the University of Michigan.
Shannon’s rise to fame came after the publication of his paper, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” but the mathematician had spent years prior honing his skills.
As a kid, Shannon worked on old radio systems and built a telegram out of barbed wire outside of his house, which sits right outside of downtown Gaylord. As a teen, he earned money by delivering messages through Morse code with Western Union.
In 1932, Shannon graduated from Gaylord High School, where his mother was principal, according to the Otsego County Historical Society.
“Here's somebody that did extraordinary things and grew up in a very ordinary town,” former Gaylord Superintendent Brian Pearson said. “His parents had allowed him to go out and explore.”He attended the University of Michigan and eventually the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studying mathematics and electrical engineering.
The graduate student became interested in Boolean algebra, a branch of mathematics that focuses on equations with variables that only have two values: one and zero. His master’s thesis, “A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits,” showed how phone relays and light circuits could be simplified using algebra.
“I think his realization goes back to when he was an adolescent working for Western Union,” Hero said.
He later used Boolean algebra in his 1948 paper about information theory.
Shannon worked in several fields. According to MIT, he worked on genetic research during his doctoral degree and developed methods for delivering cryptic messages between world leaders during World War II.
He also developed some of the earliest AI systems.
While working for Bell Laboratories, a former research arm of AT&T, he created a metal maze for an electronic mouse, Thesus, to navigate. Shannon’s goal was that the electronic mouse would learn from its mistakes by storing and utilizing information in hundreds of relay cables stored under the maze.
That is considered one of the first successful experiments on machine learning, in which a machine identifies patterns and refines its decisions.
He also wrote a paper on “Programming a Computer for Playing Chess,” which later helped develop the first AI chess bot.
“The Claude Shannon story is he tinkered his way to greatness,” Pearson said.
While Shannon is well known in the computer science industry, his name isn’t as famous as other researchers of his time like Robert Oppenheimer or Albert Einstein.
That's because he was reluctant to be in the spotlight.
“He intentionally didn't self-promote,” Pearson said. “He was not that guy.”
Following his death in 2001, editors of the MIT Technology Review wrote that Shannon “turned down almost all the endless invitations to lecture, or to give newspaper interviews; he didn’t want to be a celebrity.”
However, the Michigander’s legacy has been carried on in Gaylord. In October 2000, the University of Michigan and the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers placed a statue of Shannon downtown, where his father’s furniture store was before it was demolished in the 1990s.
There are five other identical statues across the country.
In 2016, the Otsego County Historical Society dedicated an exhibit to the mathematician to help educate people about his accomplishments. Recently, Gaylord Intermediate School established a science, technology, engineering and mathematics lab in honor of the former resident.
“It's a matter of introducing him to our students,” Pearson said. “Leveraging his success and his accomplishments as motivation for our students. Because sometimes I think our students think, ‘I'm isolated. I'm in northern Michigan. People from other places do these types of things.’”
