On the origin of the term "boolean"....

Several courses at Treehouse deal with the boolean data type (in various languages) and yet none of the courses has mentioned where the term "boolean" came from (either in the videos or in the teachers notes).

Why not? This is important computer geek/nerd stuff!

In actual fact the term Boolean is most often credited to a gentlemen named George Boole (1815-1864).

He published a pamphlet in 1847 entitled "Mathematical Analysis of Logic".

This was followed in 1854 by a book called "An Investigation of the Laws of Thought on Which are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities" (commonly referred to as "The Laws of Thought").

Together these two works are often cited as the origin of what eventually became know as "boolean algebra".

Some links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Boole

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_algebra

http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/38836/boolean-logic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Laws_of_Thought

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15114/15114-pdf.pdf?session_id=98dad5743791cfc46a571233f1bbf65a24a7666d

Around 1881-82, someone named Allan Marquand (1853-1924) build a machine "logical machine", build mainly out of red cedar.

Marquand was a student of someone named Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914).

It was in a letter between them (in 1886) that Pierce first recognized that logical operations could be carried out by electrical switching circuits.

Here's some links:

http://history-computer.com/ModernComputer/thinkers/Peirce.html

http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=4090

http://history-computer.com/Library/Marquand.pdf

However, it wasn't until 1937 (90 years after Boole published his original pamphlet), that Claude Elwood Shannon (1916–2001) submitted to MIT a master's thesis entitled "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits", which showed that the two-valued algebra developed by George Boole could be used as a basis for the design of electrical circuits.

Here's some links:

http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=745

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Symbolic_Analysis_of_Relay_and_Switching_Circuits

Hopefully in future revisions of course which deal with booleans, such as:

http://teamtreehouse.com/library/ruby-booleans http://teamtreehouse.com/library/swift-basics/types/numbers-and-booleans

.. at least can have some referencing of historical links (such as those above) can be made under the "Further Reading" section of those courses.

Thanks for your attention to this important matter.