Error detecting and error correcting codes. Offprint

Hamming, Richard Wesley (1915-98). Error detecting and error codes. Bell System Technical Publications, Monograph 1757. 14pp. New York: Bell Telephone Laboratories, October 1950. 277 x 214 mm. Original printed wrappers, perforated for ring binder as issued. Near fine. Library stamp on front wrapper. First Separate Edition. Hamming was the first coding theorist to attract widespread interest in his work. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Illinois in 1942, and after a stint at Los Alamos, where his job was to keep the Manhattan Project's IBM relay computers functioning, he went to work at Bell Telephone Laboratories, joining the recently hired Claude Shannon in the mathematics department. In 1947, frustrated when a failure in one of Bell Lab's relay computers had spoiled a run of data, Hamming began developing the first error-correction codes (now known as Hamming codes), which enabled computers to find and correct single errors in a stretch of data, as well as to discover double errors. Error correction has since been developed into a scientific discipline. Hammond's paper first appeared in Vol. 29 of the Bell System Technical Journal, issued in April 1950; the separate monograph version was published six months later. Origins of Cyberspace 646. .…