The early days of information theory

Shannon´s communication (information) theory cast about as much light on the problem of the communication engineer as can be shed. It reflected or encompassed earlier work, but it was so new that it was not really understood by many of those who first talked or wrote about it. Most of the papers published on information theory through 1950 are irrelevant to Shannon´s work. Later work has given us useful information and encoding schemes as well as greater rigor, but the wisdom of Shannon´s way of looking at things and his original theorems are of primary importance.