Part of juggling’s appeal to Shannon might have been the fact that it didn’t come easily. For all his mathematical and mechanical gifts, “it was something he simply could not master, making it all the more tantalizing,” wrote Jon Gertner. “Shannon would often lament that he had small hands, and thus had great difficulty making the jump from four balls to five—a demarcation, some might argue, between a good juggler and a great juggler.” Here, at least, Shannon was destined to be merely good.
