Logic Gates and Arithmetic Operations

Claude Shannon, one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century, demonstrated that electrical circuits, known as logic gates, can be used to implement boolean algebra, which was developed by the 19th-century mathematician George Boole. He showed that these gates could be used to implement any logical, numerical relationship. That is, we can use gates of logic to make decisions and carry out arithmetic operations. This was a breakthrough idea for computing! This lesson shows how these gates can be used to perform addition, which is a fundamental requirement for a computer’s ALU.