Percy Ludgate

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Percy Edwin Ludgate ( August 2, 1883 - October 16, 1922 ) was an Irish designer of a calculating machine. His main occupation was an accountant in Dublin .

Little is known about his life, but he worked alone and part-time on his computer design. During World War I he was involved in organizing animal feed in Ireland.

Ludgate developed a mechanical calculating machine in Dublin around 1908, initially without knowing about his predecessor Charles Babbage (in 1914, however, he wrote an article about Babbage). It was based on a multiplication algorithm ( called Irish multiplication by CV Boys ) and not on addition as with Babbage. The exact mechanism is not known and no drawing or machine has survived. According to Brian Randell (who wrested Ludgate's contribution to computer history from oblivion around 1970) it only existed on paper, but showed a high degree of originality and ingenuity.

According to Randell, it is a programmable mechanical computer that carried out all four types of arithmetic and stored up to 192 numbers with twenty decimal places each, using boxes with pins arranged on rotating cylindrical disks. It was programmable via punched tape and was very compact, much smaller than the Babbage machine.

He died of pneumonia in 1922 at the age of only 39. No estate or records are known about his adding machine.

literature

  • Brian Randell Ludgate's analytical machine of 1909 , The Computer Journal, Volume 14, 1971, pp. 317-326
  • Brian Randell From analytical engine to electronic digital computer: The contributions of Ludgate, Torres and Bush , IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Volume 4, 1983, pp. 327-341 (with photo), pdf
  • Michael R. Williams History of Computing Technology , IEEE Press 1997 (Chapter 4.8: Percy Ludgate)
  • CV Boys A new analytical engine , Nature, Vol. 81, 1909, pp. 14-15

Fonts

  • On a proposed analytical machine , Scientific Proceedings of the Royal Dublin Society, Volume 12, 1909, pp. 77-91
  • Chapter Automatic calculating engines in Ellice Martin Horsburgh (editor) Napier tercentenary celebration: Handbook of the exhibition of Napier relics and of books, instruments, and devices for facilitating calculation , Royal Society of Edinburgh 1914, pp. 124–127 (covers Babbag's computer)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Brian Randell tried hard to find out more about him in the 1970s and was able to find a niece
  2. ↑ Ludgate himself says this in his 1914 essay on Babbage
personal data
SURNAME Ludgate, Percy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ludgate, Percy Edwin (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish inventor
DATE OF BIRTH August 2, 1883
DATE OF DEATH October 16, 1922