Scope and Content Note
The papers of Claude Elwood Shannon (1916-2001) span the years 1932-1995, with the bulk of the material dating from 1938 to1989. Shannon established the field of information theory with several seminal scientific papers, including “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” published in 1948. He was first to realize that the bit, expressed mathematically with only two symbols, ones and zeros, could serve as the basic unit of any kind of electronically generated information in communications and computer systems. His papers are organized in Correspondence, Speeches and Writings, Miscellany, Oversize, and Digital File series. A few documents are in French, German, Russian, or Japanese. Some of the writings in the collection, particularly in the Speeches and Writings series, are in the hand of Shannon's wife, Mary E. Shannon, to whom Claude Shannon often dictated his work.
The Correspondence series, grouped in general and postcard files, documents the promulgation of ideas based on information theory, not only in mathematics, computer science, electrical engineering and other scientific and technical fields, but in sociology, law, economics, psychology, linguistics, and literature as well. The correspondence also relates to areas in which Shannon's professional and avocational interests converged, such as programming computers and automata to play chess and other games, run mazes, juggle, and solve puzzles. There is also additional material on these topics in the Miscellany series. Scientific papers attached to general correspondence have been filed in the Miscellany series. The postcards are related mostly to the distribution of Shannon's scientific papers during 1948-1951.
Correspondents include Merle M. Andrew, William Ross Ashby, Edmund Callis Berkeley, Vincent P. Biunno, Hendrik W. Bode, Gordon Stanley Brown, J. W. Campbell, James U. Casby, Kevin Dowling, Peter Elias, Dennis Flanagan, Merrill M. Flood, Dennis Gabor, L. Ron Hubbard, Stephen Cole Kleene, Edward Lasker, David N. L. Levy, Anthony F. Liversidge, John McCarthy, Edward F. Moore, John R. Pierce, Emanuel Ruben Piore, G. Baley Price, Carl Sagan, Edwin S. Shneidman, David Singmaster, Julius Adams Stratton, A. M. Uttley, John Von Neumann, and Warren Weaver.
Articles and scientific papers among the Speeches and Writings series, including theorems, are organized in alphabetical and chronological files. Dated articles and scientific papers are arranged chronologically, while the undated material is organized alphabetically by title. Shannon's articles and papers published under the auspices of his employer, Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey, and meant for general dissemination are part of the Speeches and Writings, but technical memoranda, Shannon's work produced at the company, are part of the Bell Telephone Laboratories file in the Miscellany series.