Almon Brown Strowger was an Inventor and Pioneer born Feb 11, 1839 in Penfield, New York. Even at an early age when given a task by his mother, Almon and his brothers would spend the majority of their time constructing a machine to carry out the task. Before Strowger invented the first automatic telephone system, he was a grade school teacher, Union Lieutenant in the 8th New York Calvary in the Civil War, and lastly an Undertaker for twenty years post Civil War("Almon brown strowger," ). In 1888 Strowger invented the automatic telephone exchange from a round collar box and some straight pins with a wiper attached to a pencil in the center of the contraption long enough to reach each pin("Almon brown strowger,"). With each subscriber having one of these switches and proper manipulation of the wiper and shaft could make a connection with any contact desired. Almon patented the first automatic telephone exchange in 1891 and the first automatic telephone exchange was installed in La Porte, Indiana in 1892("Almon brown strowger,"). So there it was, the Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange that cut out the operators’ use and became standard equipment in the telephone systems worldwide until the touch-tone dialing in the late 1970’s.
Claude Shannon was an American mathematician and electronic engineer born in Petoskey, Michigan in April of 1916 to a line of New Jersey settlers. Shannon’s grandfather was also an inventor and designed the first washing machine ("Claude shannon,”). Shannon was also fond of inventing at a young age and actually built an off-balance unicycle that made it easier for the rider to juggle while operating the bike. Shannon is known as the Father of the Information Theory from a paper he published in 1948.Besides being responsible for designing the digital computer and digital circuit theory, at only 21 years old, he demonstrated that the electrical application of Boolean algebra was an easy solution for any logical, numerical relationship("Claude shannon," ). Shannon graduated with two bachelor’s degrees from the University of Michigan in both electrical engineering and mathematics. In 1940, Shannon devised the theory that the Boolean algebra and binary arithmetic could simplify the arrangement of the electromechanical relays that were being used in the telephone routing switches("Claude shannon,”). He based his theory on forcing the electrical switches to do the logic, which influenced how digital computers were created and replaced the ad hoc methods that were previously in place ("Claude shannon,”). He later worked at Bell Laboratories in 1942 and found a way to efficiently transmit information that was all through mathematics. One important facet of Shannon’s theory was the concept of entropy, which is a shortage of information in a message. Shannon received many honors for his work on communication and opened the door for future engineers to build on his simplified theory ("Claude shannon,”).
Paul Baran was born 1926 in Grodno, Second Polish Republic to a Jewish family who moved to the United States in May of 1928. Baran and his family moved from Boston to Philly, where he delivered groceries in his little red wagon for his father’s store he owned ("Paul baran,”). Baran attended Drexel University before he moved to Los Angeles and took night classes to earn his masters in engineering. After he graduated, Baran started working for a company called RAND Corporation, which specialized in non-profit research and development focusing on the cold war issues("Paul baran,”). America was frantic; threats from the USSR put fear into the nation and presented new sets of problems for the United States ("Internet pioneers paul,”). New problems equal new solutions, and new solutions can prompt some major technological advances in the process. One of the biggest fears was that there was not a proper means of communicating messages over long distances during this hectic time. What if the United States was attacked? How would the words be spread on what to do next? Where would the United States go from there? How would intelligence be communicated to the proper channel if cities and communications were destroyed from a nuclear attack? How could America recover if they did not know how to survive the attack? Baran then figured out that a distributed network could solve the problem through a packet switching technique by using digital computers. Instead of sending information centralized or decentralized (which depend on major hubs not being destroyed) his distributed theory broke the information into blocks that would initially split the message up in order to get a more clear and precise message at the destination ("Paul baran,”). His packet switching technique allowed problems to occur, such as destroyed hubs, where the network would automatically send the “message to another location to reach the final destination. Even though many people doubted what he wanted to do with technology initially, he opened another gateway for further technological advances for the Internet world ("Paul baran,”).
Lawrence (Larry) G. Roberts was born in 1937 to two people that had earned doctorates in chemistry. Rob