In
1949,
Claude Elwood Shannon and
Warren Weaver[?] wrote
The Mathematical Theory of Communication. (
ISBN 0252725484) This founded the modern discipline of
information theory. Thus it is possible to measure the amount of information in a message.
Shannon's law
- <math>C = W \log_2(1 + S/N)</math>
where
- C = bits per second - channel capacity,
- W = frequency - bandwidth,
- S/N = signal-to-noise ratio,
shows that there is a theoretical maximum amount of information that can be transmitted over a
bandwidth-limited carrier in the ever-present background
noise.