Early Work in the Field of Information Theory

The need for a unified theory of information management came to be as a result of two trends that were growing rapidly and uncontrollably. The mass of information being gathered by humanity was found to be growing geometrically. The number of years in which the total amount of information doubled was becoming fewer and fewer. additionally, the rate at which information needed to be transmitted from one place to another kept growing. Advances in photography, motion picture recording and publishing multiplied the number of movies, TY programs, and periodicals that brought new information into our homes. The number of telephone lines and frequency of telephone conversations was growing daily. New modes such as television were gobbling up bandwidth at an astounding rate. It took 1800 KHz for an intelligible voice channel but acceptable broadcast quality video was 4.5 MHz wide, including audio channel.

Claude Shannon published his article "A Mathematical Theory of Communications in 1848. Shannon's Theorem describes mathematically how much information can be transmitted on a channel of a given bandwidth. Information theory extends across a broad field of sciences and disciplines. Electronics, thermodynamics, and electromagnetic theory dictate capabilities and limitations of information storage and transmission hardware. Computer science, network theory, packet switching, and modulation theory deal with how the information is stored and routed from provider to recipient. Learner theory, instructional design, and human psychology deal with the interface between the body of information and the human mind (and emotions).



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