211. Boole (George) An Investigation of the Laws of Thought…, first edition, ?first issue, errata leaf at end, occasional light spotting, original black blind-stamped cloth, covers a little damp-marked, [Norman 266; Origins of Cyberspace 224], 8vo, London & Cambridge, 1854.
est. £2000 – £3000
Presumably the first of the three issues identified by Norman: the first with Walton and Maberly imprint, errata at end, and binding as described above; the second still with imprint as above but with errata after preliminaries, an additional "note" leaf at end, publisher's catalogue at end, and differences to the binding; and a third (as in the Norman copy), with cancel title, new imprint, and green cloth binding with Boole's name on spine for the first time.
A landmark of science. "Boole invented the first practical system of logic in algebraic form, which enabled more advances in logic to be made in the decades of the nineteenth century than in the twenty-two centuries preceding. Boole's work led to the creation of set theory and probability theory in mathematics, to the philosophical work of Peirce, Russell, Whitehead and Wittgenstein, and to computer technology via the master's thesis of C. E. Shannon (1937), who recognized that the true/false values in Boole's two-valued algebra were analgous to the open and closed states of electric circuits. This invention of the binary digit or "bit" made possible the development of the digital computer" (Norman).
Today nearly everyone who uses a computer is familiar with Boolean Logic but the book that launched the theory is scarce.