Today marks the 200th birthday of George Boole.

Who?

George Boule (1815-1864)

George Boole was an English professor and researcher who, while teaching at Queen’s College in Cork, Ireland (now University College Cork), set forth the underpinnings for what we refer to now as Boolean Logic.  Boolean Logic is the basis for modern electronic circuitry and programming.  Claude Shannon in the 1930s would take the concepts and apply them in circuitry to build the initial binary circuits leading towards computers.

The basic operations are:

The basic operations of Boolean algebra are as follows.

• And (conjunction), denoted x∧y (sometimes x AND y or Kxy), satisfies x∧y = 1 if x = y = 1 and x∧y = 0 otherwise.
• Or (disjunction), denoted x∨y (sometimes x OR y or Axy), satisfies x∨y = 0 if x = y = 0 and x∨y = 1 otherwise.
• Not (negation), denoted ¬x (sometimes NOT x, Nx or !x), satisfies ¬x = 0 if x = 1 and ¬x = 1 if x = 0.

If the truth values 0 and 1 are interpreted as integers, these operations may be expressed with the ordinary operations of arithmetic:

Obviously, GorT is well-versed in it and really enjoys boolean algebra to the point that he took a class in it during his undergraduate Computer Science degree program (it was actually taught out of the mathematics department).

For our younger readers out there, it is well worth a look and consideration as it can be applied in many ways and helps in a variety of fields.

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.