Information theory was created by Claude Shannon in his landmark 1948 paper 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication.' In one stroke, Shannon defined information mathematically (as entropy), proved that data compression has a fundamental limit, and showed that reliable communication over noisy channels is possible — up to a maximum rate called the channel capacity.
Shannon's theory is the foundation of the entire digital age. Data compression (ZIP, MP3, JPEG), error-correcting codes (in every phone call, hard drive, and satellite link), cryptography, and even machine learning all rest on information-theoretic principles. The bit — Shannon's basic unit — became the atom of the digital world.
These simulations let you explore Shannon's key results: measure the entropy of messages, see how compression approaches the theoretical limit, watch error-correcting codes recover data from noise, and compute the capacity of noisy channels.