{"id":831,"date":"2015-09-12T13:53:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-12T03:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2015\/09\/12\/claude-shannon-had-the-knack-video\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T10:14:54","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T00:14:54","slug":"claude-shannon-had-the-knack-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2015\/09\/12\/claude-shannon-had-the-knack-video\/","title":{"rendered":"Claude Shannon had The Knack (video)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/shannon_claude.gif\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"400\" src=\"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/shannon_claude.gif\" width=\"313\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"330\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/z2Whj_nL-x8\" width=\"440\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p> <b>From Wikipedia: <\/b><br \/> <b>Shannon showed an inclination towards mechanical and electrical things. His best subjects were science and mathematics, and at home he constructed such devices as models of planes, a radio-controlled model boat and a wireless <a class=\"mw-redirect\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Telegraph\" title=\"Telegraph\">telegraph<\/a> system to a friend&#8217;s house a half-mile away. While growing up, he also worked as a messenger for the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Western_Union\" title=\"Western Union\">Western Union<\/a> company.<\/b><br \/> <b>His childhood hero was <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thomas_Edison\" title=\"Thomas Edison\">Thomas Edison<\/a>, whom he later learned was a distant cousin. Both were descendants of John Ogden (1609\u20131682), a colonial leader and an ancestor of many distinguished people. <\/b><br \/> <b><br \/><\/b>  <\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"> <b>*************<\/b><\/div>\n<p> <b><br \/><\/b> <b>And he he was part of a scheme to beat Vegas at the roulette wheel through the use of what may have been the first wearable computer: <\/b><br \/> <b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2013\/09\/18\/edward-thorp-father-of-wearable-computing\/\">http:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2013\/09\/18\/edward-thorp-father-of-wearable-computing\/<\/a><\/b><br \/> <b><br \/><\/b>  <\/p>\n<div style=\"background-color: white; color: #4a4a4a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', proxima-nova, proxima-nova-1, proxima-nova-2, 'Proxima Nova', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px;\"> <b><i>An excerpt from that site: <\/i><\/b><\/div>\n<div style=\"background-color: white; color: #4a4a4a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', proxima-nova, proxima-nova-1, proxima-nova-2, 'Proxima Nova', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px;\"> <b><i>After their initial meeting, Thorp says, &#8220;we got right to it,&#8221; and he spent about half his time for the next eight months working away with Shannon in that basement lab in Shannon&#8217;s house, on one of Massachusetts&#8217; Mystic Lakes. In his paper, Thorp described the lab as a &#8220;gadgeteer&#8217;s paradise,&#8221; with what he estimated to be about a hundred thousand dollars&#8217; worth of electronic, electrical and mechanical items. The regulation roulette wheel, ordered from Reno for $1,500, was set up on an old slate billiard table.<\/i><\/b><\/div>\n<div style=\"background-color: white; color: #4a4a4a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', proxima-nova, proxima-nova-1, proxima-nova-2, 'Proxima Nova', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px;\"> <b><i>Thorp describes Shannon as the &#8220;ultimate gadgeteer,&#8221; and recalled in his paper that the man he met in that office was a &#8220;thinnish alert man of middle height and build, somewhat sharp-featured,&#8221; and that &#8220;his eyes had a genial crinkle and the brows suggested puckish incisive humor.&#8221; That humor would become evident as the two worked together at the house on the lake. Thorp wrote that Shannon taught him to juggle three balls, and that he rode a unicycle on a steel cable strung between two tree stumps. &#8220;He later reached his goal,&#8221; he wrote, &#8220;which was to juggle the balls while riding the unicycle on the tightrope.&#8221;<\/i><\/b><\/div>\n<p> Our book: &#8220;SolderSmoke &#8212; Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/soldersmoke.com\/book.htm\">http:\/\/soldersmoke.com\/book.htm<\/a> Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cafepress.com\/SolderSmoke\">http:\/\/www.cafepress.com\/SolderSmoke<\/a> Our Book Store: <a href=\"http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/contracross-20\">http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/contracross-20<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Wikipedia: Shannon showed an inclination towards mechanical and electrical things. His best subjects were science and mathematics, and at home he constructed such devices as models of planes, a radio-controlled model boat and a wireless telegraph system to a friend&#8217;s house a half-mile away. While growing up, he also worked as a messenger for &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2015\/09\/12\/claude-shannon-had-the-knack-video\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Claude Shannon had The Knack (video)&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[144,103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-computer-history","category-knack-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":833,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions\/833"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}