Talk:Claude Shannon

Flame-throwing trumpet?

The article claims Shannon to have invented a "flame-throwing trumpet", linking an MIT Museum page. Said page does not mention or show any such device. Neither today or back in 2016. It does list an extensive number of inventions, all reasonably related to Shannon's other interests. A flame-throwing trumpet is an outlier and requires extra-ordinary proof, but zero is given. Various online sources mention it, but it appears to have been copied from this article by a lazy journalist. No additional evidence is given anywhere. --2003:DB:9F03:182:257:9C07:F65E:41D4 (talk) 12:55, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Apparently, this has been in the article since 25 August 2004 (see this diff). The ref was added on 28 April 2016 (see this diff). We would require a reference published before August 2004 to verify this claim. (I've seen numerous articles published afterwards all making the same statements without citing sources, including many obituaries; some have surely used this article as their source.) I've removed the statement, with no prejudice against its reintroduction with a valid source. Mindmatrix 14:17, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article on Uttanka fails to mention the flame-throwing incident with the horse, and few things are as well documented as THAT. This, the Claude Shannon article, suffers from a similar unwillingness to shine light into dark corners. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ~2026-31287-29 (talk) 17:23, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Computation, Culture, and Society

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 March 2025 and 31 May 2025. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Contributor 374 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: JoNeedsSleep.

— Assignment last updated by Laurelli7 (talk) 19:03, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

Statues

"There are six statues of Shannon sculpted by Eugene Daub"—Are there? Or are there six casts of one statue? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:12, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

formulation

"His Theseus machine was the first electrical device to learn by trial and error, being one of the first examples of artificial intelligence."

This sentence poses a problem. Artificial intelligence is a field of research, a discipline, some say a science, other a technique. As formulated, the sentence let us believe that a device which embeds some principles of this discipline, namely the trial-and-error principle, is indeed a form of intelligence, intelligence which happens to be artificial. There is a huge gap in between having a machine that achieves a pre-programmed goal by a principle of trial-and-error and an "intelligence" that would be natural or artificial.

Baba Arouj (talk) 19:54, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

I know what you mean but it's more that the sentence has to reflect the info in the sources. In the history of artificial intelligence, it was quite common to call any breakthrough where the computer did more on its own (as opposed to being hardcoded) than had been done before "artificial intelligence". I think the sentence here just reflects the sources. Maybe try and dig up a modern source that speaks about Theseus in more careful terms. Daphne Morrow (talk) 06:29, 5 September 2025 (UTC)