Szilard Models the Relationship between Information and Thermodynamics

While working at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 1929, Austro-Hungarian physicist and inventor Leo Szilard published "Über die Entropieverminderung in einem thermodynamischen System bei Eingrffen intelligenter Wesen," Zeitschrift für Physik 53 (1929) 840-856. The paper described a theoretical model that served both as a heat engine and an information engine, establishing the relationship between thermodynamics (manipulation and transfer of energy and entropy,) and information (manipulation and transmission of bits).

Szilard was one of the first to show that "Nature seems to talk in terms of information" (Seife, Decoding the Universe, 77).