The Bandwagon [article in IRE Transactions on Information Theory, Volume IT-2, March 1956 Number 1]

New York: Institute for Radio Engineers, Inc, 1956. First Edition. Wraps. Good. First Edition. 45, [1-blank] pages. 10 7/8 x 8 1/2 inches. Original printed green wrappers, stapled. Entire journal issue offered. Minor creasing to the front panel. Significant soiling and dampstaining to the back cover and last few pages. A touch of dampstaining to most pages near the fore-edge, otherwise clean. Wraps. Louis A. de Rosa (Chairman of the IRE Professional Group on Information Theory) polled group members asking if they should extend their scope to address information theory outside of radio and wired communications. Shannon answered with this one-page article, "The Bandwagon," advising colleagues that "we must keep our own house in first class order. The subject of information theory has certainly been sold, if not oversold. We should now turn our attention to the business of research and development at the highest plane we can maintain. Research rather than exposition is the keynote, and our critical thresholds should be raised." Shannon goes on to note that a few carefully peer-reviewed research papers are vastly preferable to "a large number that are poorly conceived or half-finished. The latter are no credit to their writers and a waste of time to their reader." (Soni and Goodman)

The journal also includes a brief biography and photograph of Shannon; articles by Lampard, Lees, Blachman, Sherman, Dinneed & Reed, and DuWald; the preliminary announcement of an upcoming 'Symposium on Information Theory' to be held at MIT in September 1956; and an extensive report on the 1955 Third London Symposium on Information Theory.

PROVENANCE: The personal files of Claude E. Shannon (unmarked). This was the only example in Shannon's files.

REFERENCES:
Sloane and Wyner, "Claude Elwood Shannon Collected Papers," #103
Soni and Goodman, "A Mind at Play, How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age" (Simon & Schuster: 2018), pp 189-192.