People that spoke with William Shockley in the 1960s all said the same thing. They said it was like talking to God.

Shockley helped invent and commercialize the transistor. A transistor is a small, simple machine that for the first time made information electronic and automatic. It was the next step in a very important thread of innovation passing through Claude Shannon, the developer of information theory, who was himself influenced by an obscure self-taught French philosopher named George Boole, hence the term "boolean logic". George Boole, who studied the "laws of thought" was inspired by researching the polytheism of the ancient Egyptians and Persians. From there it gets murky, but the thread always connects to the source. It's true what they say, if you want a new idea read an old book.