In 1854, George Boole published An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, showing that propositional logic can be treated as an algebra. True/false became objects manipulable with formal operations.
Decades later, Claude Shannon applied Boolean algebra to switching-circuit design (1937–1938), bridging mathematical logic and digital electronics. Without that bridge, modern computing—and the AI that runs on it—would not exist in its present form.
Boole did not speak of “artificial intelligence,” but he did speak of mechanizing patterns of thought. His legacy is the symbolic infrastructure behind both digital logic and early expert systems.
