Departure question
Move sameness aroundPort 7 of 8Use rotations, permutations, matrices, and categories to read transformation rules and relationships rather than appearances.
This voyage is an editorial path for understanding, not a claim of direct historical influence or sole invention.
An algebra of relations between two logical values, true (1) and false (0). Boole's nineteenth-century system was extended by later logicians, and in 1937 Shannon showed how Boolean algebra could analyze and design relay switching circuits. A functionally complete gate such as NAND can express any finite Boolean function, although a physical computer also depends on timing, storage, devices, and architecture.
A | B | A AND B | A OR B | A XOR B | NOT A |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
A truth table — just four input cases define every one of these logic gates.
An algebra of true/false relations, later connected by Shannon to switching-circuit design and now central to digital logic.
Ports in time
Follow the scenes to see problems, notation, standards of proof, and applications changing across different times and places.
Self-taught Irish mathematician George Boole published a system for calculating with logic as though it were algebra. It attracted little attention at the time.
No reliable place is given, so time continues without an invented pin
Continue through the world of this yearIn his MIT master’s thesis at age 21, Claude Shannon showed that Boolean algebra could describe electrical switching circuits — one of the most influential master’s theses ever written.
The recorded place matches a canonical map anchor
Continue this scene on the mapThe pioneering general-purpose digital computer used 17,468 vacuum tubes as switching elements for logical operations.
No reliable place is given, so time continues without an invented pin
Continue through the world of this yearThe Intel 4004 compressed a complete processing unit of roughly 2,300 transistors onto one chip, opening the microprocessor era.
No reliable place is given, so time continues without an invented pin
Continue through the world of this yearEvery digital circuit (AND/OR/NOT gates), database WHERE clauses, search queries, and if statements in programs.
Curated sources and problems. Bring one discovery back from OEIS, Project Euler, MathOverflow, or arXiv.
No concept belongs to one person
These are not inventor credits. They are different ports: opening a problem, sharpening a language, or carrying it into another world.
Number lenses
These numbers are editorial lenses for the voyage, not required prerequisites.
Use rotations, permutations, matrices, and categories to read transformation rules and relationships rather than appearances.
Open the number voyage
Use rotations, permutations, matrices, and categories to read transformation rules and relationships rather than appearances.
Open the number voyage
Use rotations, permutations, matrices, and categories to read transformation rules and relationships rather than appearances.
Open the number voyage
Concept genealogy
Concepts arriving from before
Current port
Boolean Algebra
Concepts opened from here
Only direct editorial links are shown; this is not a complete learning order or historical influence line.
