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ANALYTICAL MACHINE LUDGATE, PERCY. 1883-1922. On a Proposed Analytical Machine. Dublin: The Royal Dublin Society, 1909. image 1
ANALYTICAL MACHINE LUDGATE, PERCY. 1883-1922. On a Proposed Analytical Machine. Dublin: The Royal Dublin Society, 1909. image 2
Lot 45

ANALYTICAL MACHINE
LUDGATE, PERCY. 1883-1922.
On a Proposed Analytical Machine. Dublin: The Royal Dublin Society, 1909.

5 November 2020, 10:00 PST
Los Angeles

Sold for US$828.75 inc. premium

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ANALYTICAL MACHINE

LUDGATE, PERCY. 1883-1922. On a Proposed Analytical Machine. Dublin: The Royal Dublin Society, 1909.
8vo (280 x 184 mm). Original blue printed wrappers, uncut and unopened. Wrappers lightly sunned at edges, otherwise an excellent copy. Old library stamp to front wrapper.
Offprint from: The Scientific Proceedings of the Royal Dublin Society. Volume XII (N.S.), Number 9.
Provenance: the Computer History Collection of Serge Roubé.

FIRST APPEARANCE, offprint issue, of Ludgate's calculating machine, developed independently of Babbage's design and today considered closer to the modern computer than Babbage's. Portable and based on multiplication rather than addition, Ludgate's engine could also be programmed and was "the result of about six years' work, undertaken ... with the object of designing machinery capable of performing calculations, however, intricate or laborious, without the immediate guidance of the human intellect" (p 77). The machine was never built, and sadly, Ludgate's original drawings of it have been lost. Rarely encountered as a separate offprint. Randell Origins of Digital Computers (3d ed), pp 73-87 (reprinting this paper), 489. See Hook & Norman Origins of Cyberspace p 72.

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