Fortune's Formula

Searching for a Sure Thing

In 1956, Claude Shannon worked at AT&T’s Bell Labs in Orange, New Jersey. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) aggressively courted him for its faculty because of his work on information theory, the science behind today’s computers, and the field of digital communications. Shannon had the idea of developing the binary code of zeroes and ones to simulate the "on" and "off" positions in electrical circuits. Due to this work, he was one of the inventors credited with building the first computer. Based on a 1948 paper he wrote, Shannon was also known for shaping the ways that information theory contributed to developing the entire digital age. Applied in the real world, his paper led to multiple inventions including cell phones, HDTV, DNA sequencing and fiber optic cable.

Shannon was born in Petoskey, Michigan, in 1918. He picked up his grandfather’s interest in investing. Graduating from the University of Michigan in 1936, he happened to see a postcard inviting applicants to work on a new MIT computer, the Differential Analyzer. Shannon met with the computer’s inventor, Vannevar Bush, who hired him. The computer, the size of a...