John Horgan at his own website:
Claude Shannon can’t sit still. We’re in the living room of his home north of Boston, an edifice called Entropy House, and I’m trying to get him to recall how he came up with information theory. Shannon, who is a boyish 73, with a shy grin and snowy hair, is tired of dwelling on his past. He wants to show me his gadgets.
Over the mild protests of his wife, Betty, he leaps from his chair and disappears into another room. When I catch up with him, he proudly shows me his seven chess-playing machines, gasoline-powered pogo-stick, hundred-bladed jackknife, two-seated unicycle and countless other marvels.
Some of his personal creations–such as a mechanical mouse that navigates a maze, a juggling W. C. Fields mannequin and a computer that calculates in Roman numerals–are dusty and in disrepair. But Shannon seems as delighted with his toys as a 10-year-old on Christmas morning.
Is this the man who, at Bell Labs in 1948, wrote “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” the Magna Carta of the digital age? Whose work is described as the greatest “in the annals of technological thought” by Bell Labs executive Robert Lucky?
Yes.
More here.