Contents

Introduction

1



1 Gaylord

2 Ann Arbor

3 The Room-Sized Brain

4 MIT

5 A Decidedly Unconventional Type of Youngster

6 Cold Spring Harbor

7 The Labs

8 Princeton

9 Fire Control

10 A Six-Day Workweek

11 The Unspeakable System

12 Turing

13 Manhattan

2



14 The Utter Dark

15 From Intelligence to Information

16 The Bomb

17 Building a Bandwagon

18 Mathematical Intentions, Honorable and Otherwise

19 Wiener

20 A Transformative Year

21 TMI

22 “We Urgently Need the Assistance of Dr. Claude E. Shannon”

23 The Man-Machines

24 The Game of Kings

25 Constructive Dissatisfaction

3



26 Professor Shannon

27 Inside Information

28 A Gadgeteer’s Paradise

29 Peculiar Motions

30 Kyoto

31 The Illness

32 Aftershocks

Photographs

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Illustration Credits

Notes

Bibliography

Index