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Claude Shannon Trivia Questions

How much do you really know about Claude Shannon? Below are 8 true or false statements. Click each one to reveal the answer and explanation.

1.

Shannon's master's thesis at MIT laid the foundation for digital circuit design and computer logic.

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Medium
✓ TRUE

His 1937 thesis showed how Boolean algebra could optimize relay circuits, directly influencing modern computer architecture.

2.

Shannon was an accomplished unicyclist who juggled while riding through the halls of Bell Labs.

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Medium
✓ TRUE

He famously juggled on a unicycle in the hallways, reflecting his playful, creative personality beyond his technical genius.

3.

Shannon designed a mechanical mouse named 'Theseus' that could learn to navigate a maze.

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Medium
✓ TRUE

Theseus, built in 1950, used relay circuits to 'remember' paths, demonstrating early machine learning concepts.

4.

Claude Shannon invented the concept of a 'bit' as a unit of information.

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Medium
✓ TRUE

Shannon's 1948 paper 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication' formally defined the bit, revolutionizing how we measure information.

5.

Shannon never received a PhD because he left academia to work at Bell Labs full time.

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Hard
✗ FALSE

Shannon earned a PhD in mathematics from MIT in 1940, writing a thesis on population genetics before joining Bell Labs.

6.

Shannon once built a machine that could solve any Rubik's Cube in under 10 moves.

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Hard
✗ FALSE

Shannon built a maze-solving mouse and a juggling machine, but not a Rubik's Cube solver—the cube wasn't invented until 1974.

7.

Shannon co-founded the field of artificial intelligence with a paper on neural networks in 1950.

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Hard
✗ FALSE

Shannon contributed to early AI (e.g., chess programs), but the field was co-founded by McCarthy, Minsky, Turing, and others.

8.

Shannon's work on cryptography during WWII was kept classified until after his death in 2001.

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Hard
✗ FALSE

His 1949 paper 'Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems' was declassified and published that same year, not after his death.

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