Percy Ludgate

Percy E. Ludgate (August 2, 1883- October 16, 1922) was an accountant in Dublin and designer of an Analytical Engine.

Working alone, Ludgate designed an Analytical Engine while unaware of Charles Babbage's designs, although he later went on to write about Babbage's machine. Ludgate's engine used multiplication as its base mechanism unlike Babbage's which used addition, Ludgate's engine used rods similar to slide rules. Its precise mechanism is unknown as only written accounts of the engine survive which do not detail its workings.

Ludgate also helped advance calculators by expanding Charles Babbage's design for the first programmable computer. He was one of a few independent workers in the field of science and mathematics. His inventions were worked on outside a lab. He worked on the inventions only part-time.

His design featured several novelties, including a method of implementing multiplication referred to at the time as 'Irish Logarithms'. (Boys, 1904)

Little is known about Ludgate's life, as his only records are his scientific writings. He died of pneumonia in 1922.

References

* Boys, C.V. "A New Analytical Engine", Nature, 81, 1909 14-15
* [http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/research/pubs/articles/papers/398.pdf From Analytical Engine to Electronic Digital Computer: The Contributions of Ludgate, Torres, and Bush.] Brian Randell, October 1982, Annals in the History of Computing, Vol. 4, No. 4
* [http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/14/3/317 Ludgate's Analytical Machine of 1909] Brian Randell, The Computer Journal, Volume 14, Issue 3, pp. 317-326. (A subscription to the journal or payment on a per-article basis is required to view this article)
* [http://www.fano.co.uk/ludgate/ The Feasibility of Ludgate's Analytical Machine]