George Boole publishes in 1854 'An Investigation of the Laws of Thought,' establishing an algebraic system where variables can only take two values (true/false, 1/0) and the logical operations AND, OR, and NOT are treated mathematically. Boole demonstrates that logical reasoning can be reduced to algebraic operations on binary symbols. His work remained for eighty years a mathematical abstraction with no evident practical application, until Claude Shannon demonstrated in 1937 that Boolean algebra exactly describes the behavior of electrical switching circuits, turning it into the mathematical foundation of all digital computing.