The Problem of Simplifying Truth Functions." In American Mathematical Monthly, Volume 59, Number 8 (1952), pp. 521-531. [Together with:] QUINE, W.V. "A Way to Simplify Truth Functions." In American Mathematical Monthly, Volume 62, Number 9 (1955), pp. 627-631.
The two complete issues, in original wrappers, octavo
by Quine, W.V.
The two complete issues, in original wrappers, octavo. A little fading at spines, small indentation at top edge of the first issue, small rubberstamp on front cover of the first issue. Very good. The first electrical logic machine was built in 1947 by two undergraduates at Harvard, Burkhart and Kalin, who had been taking a course in symbolic logic with Professor Willard V. Quine. (See Martin Gardner, Logic Machines and Diagrams, p. 128). Quine himself, one of the most influential logician-philosophers of our time, made a more direct contribution to computer science several years later, through the above papers, which are the basis of the popular Quine-McCluskey method of logical circuit minimization. This basic method, in various modern versions, is still being used today to automate the design of logical circuits and chips from a specification of their desired behavior, so as to minimize the number of gates or interconnections. (Inventory #: 7168)