George Boole

George Boole was a largely self-taught English mathematician, philosopher, and logician, most of whose short career was spent as the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork in Ireland.

Boolean logic

A computer is basically a collection of transistors and circuits. These components have two states:

• on - a current is flowing through the component
• off - a current is not flowing through the component

These two states can easily be represented by using binary:

• 1 = on (TRUE)
• 0 = off (FALSE)

Boolean logic can be used to check if the values of different states are the same or different when compared. When George Boole was studying mathematical theories, he discovered a relationship between algebra and logic. This led to the idea that by comparing different states using three main conditions, this would always output a true or false value. This later became known as a Boolean data type.

The three main types of condition are:

• AND
• OR
• NOT

• Logic gates

  In its most basic form, a computer is a collection of powered and unpowered circuits and transistors. A …