Percy Ludgate

Who was Percy Ludgate?

Percy Edwin Ludgate 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 the only written accounts of the engine which survive 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".

Little is known about Ludgate's life, as his only records are his scientific writings. The best source of information about Ludgate and his significance lie in the work of Professor Brian Randell.

He died of pneumonia in 1922.