Math & science · 1854

Boolean logic

Boole turns logic into algebra of true and false.

The Laws of Thought treated reasoning as equations in 0 and 1. Claude Shannon showed in 1937 that switching circuits obey it, making it the logic of every digital computer.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Algebra 820
Aristotelian logic 350 BCE

What it led to 7

Predicate logic 1879
Turing machine 1936
Switching circuit theory 1937
McCulloch-Pitts neuron 1943
Information theory 1948
Logic Theorist 1956
Prolog 1972

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Computation per constant dollar, 1850-2006 Latest: 7.3B million units of computer power per 2006 $ (2003) Source: Nordhaus 2007, Two Centuries of Productivity Growth in Computing, J. Econ. Hist. 67(1), Table 6

Transistors per microprocessor Latest: 58.2B transistors (2021) Source: Our World in Data