34-2,p20

CLAUDE SHANNON'S NO-DROP JUGGLING DIORAMA

By Claude E. Shannon

When Claude Shannon conceived a juggling diorama, he put his hands and head to work on an assortment of chains, rods, bolts and other hardware.

Shannon picked up an interest in juggling as an adjunct to his distinguished career in mathematics and computer science. Professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Shannon has received honorary doctoral degrees from Yale, Princeton, Edinburgh and Oxford Universities, among others.

It all started when Betty brought home a little four-inch clown, doing a five ball shower, from the cake decorating store ($1.98). I was both amused and bemused - amused as a long-time amateur juggler who even as a boy wished to run away and join the circus, but bemused by the unlikely shower pattern and the plastic connections between the balls.

A little study of this clown led to the idea of constructing a diorama of numbers juggling, a stationary display of the record number of rings. balls and clubs (and certainly without obvious connections between the props)