Rare George Boole first edition set to be auctioned

An inscribed first edition of George Boole’s theory, which led to the creation of the internet, will go on sale at rare book auction in Dublin next month.

In the year when UCC is celebrating the bicentenary of the birth in 1815 of their first Profession of Mathematics and inventor of Boolean Logic, this extremely rare work is conservatively estimated at just €5,000-7,000.

The first 1854 edition of An Investigation into the Laws of Thought published by Walton and Maberly is inscribed to: “Mrs Hill, with the Author’s respects”.

The book is in good condition with some light spotting and an errata leaf at the end. It is in its original black bind stamped cloth,which has suffered slightly from damp.

Often described as the father of the internet, Boole in this work expounds the theory which invented the first practical system of logic in algebraic form. This enabled more advances to be made in the science of logic in the latter decades of the 19th century than in the previous 22 centuries combined.

His work led to the creation of set theory and probability theory in mathematics, to the philosophical work of Peirce, Russell, Whitehead and Wittgenstein and to computer technology via the master’s thesis is CE Shannon (1937).

Shannon recognised that the true/false values in Boole’s algebra were analogous to the open and closed states of electric circuits. The invention of the binary digit or bit, made possible the development of the digital computer.

Earlier this week Google dedicated a doodle on its homepage to the mathematician which was viewed every time someone on the planet googled.

“As one of the most important scientists to have ever worked in Ireland, Boole effectively laid the foundations of the entire Information Age while working from UCC.

“So it’s fair to say that without George Boole, there’d be no Google,” the company said.

*The book will be available at Fonsie Mealy’s rare book sale at the Clyde Court Hotel in Dublin on December 15.