[SIGCIS-Members] Percy Ludgate and Konrad Zuse

[Brian Randell]

Hi:

In my request for help in investigating how the work of the Irish computer pioneer Percy Ludgate was used fifty years later to help prevent Konrad Zuse patenting the concept of a programmable digital computer (perhaps via Irven Trask's 1938 Bibliography), I inadvertently cited the first blog by Ralf Buelow on Ludgate, rather than the one in which he detailed the Ludgate-Zuse patent clash - this is at https://www.blog.hnf.de/percy-ludgate-und-konrad-zuse/ .

The relevant text in this blog post, translated, is: "on the 12th of January 1960, the Office received a new objection sent the day before. There Triumph patent attorney G. B. Hagen referred to the article of Percy Ludgate with precise references and explained it on nine pages. . . The Triumph lawyer did not consider Konrad Zuse's claims patentable because Percy Ludgate had allegedly developed similar concepts. Whether Zuse knew them was unimportant; the decisive factor was that someone had the ideas before him. . . Triumph's objections [citing Ludgate and Couffignal] did have an effect: in 1962 the Munich Office refused to patent Zuse's concept. Konrad Zuse now went to the Federal Patent Court, also based in Munich. The court rejected his appeal on the 14th July 1967. The judgement stated: "The novelty and progressiveness of the subject claimed in the main application cannot be doubted. However, no patent can be granted for lack of inventive value"."

Cheers

Brian Randell

—
 
School of Computing, Newcastle University, 1 Science Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE4 5TG
EMAIL = Brian.Randell at ncl.ac.uk   PHONE = +44 191 208 7923
URL =  https://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/staff/profile/brianrandell.html

On 26/11/2022, 22:58, "Brian Randell" <brian.randell at newcastle.ac.uk> wrote:

    Hi:

    I assumed that after the recent celebration in Dublin of the centenary of Percy Ludgate's death (https://www.scss.tcd.ie/SCSSTreasuresCatalog/literature/TCD-SCSS-V.20221015.001/TCD-SCSS-V.20221015.001.pdf ), when I drew the short straw and was the member of Brian Coghlan's team investigating Ludgate who was tasked with speaking, I would be able to reduce greatly the time I was spending on Ludgate.

    Instead, the day before the ceremony, we were alerted by Ralf Buelow to his Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum blog post (https://blog.hnf.de/percy-ludgate-der-unbekannte-computerpionier/ ) which revealed to us that Ludgate's work on an "Analytical Machine" had been used, in 1960, to attack Konrad Zuse's attempts at patenting the concept of program-controlled digital computer - work that was one of the reasons that Zuse was denied a patent. This attack was by the Triumph office machinery company, citing Ludgate's 1909 paper on his Analytical Machine. The question which intrigues us is how did Triumph and its patent attorney find out about the little-known Irish inventor? (Konrad Zuse later claimed that the company had received help from IBM - we have established that Triumph's patent attorney also worked for IBM.)

    Since we received this blog post we have been investigating records of Zuse's patent efforts, and trying to find out how news of Ludgate reached Triumph. In so doing we have found that there was significantly more awareness in the USA in the 1930s of Ludgate's work than we had suspected - in particular that a full reference to his 1909 paper was included a 1938 bibliography by Irwen Travis, a colleague of John Mauchly at the Moore School, who in 1946 gave a talk on the history of computers at the famous Moore School Lectures.

    One of the major sources we would like to be able to search are the voluminous records of the ENIAC patent litigation (1967-1973), since at the trial a number of the witnesses testified regarding their careers and knowledge of early computer developments, as well as any involvement in ENIAC. These records are at the Charles Babbage Institute, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Computer History Museum. However, these very important records are not fully indexed, and not available online, leave alone as searchable PDFs. (If only a project to generate such an online resource could be resourced and undertaken!)

    We would be pleased to hear from anyone who has detailed knowledge of these ENIAC records, and could guide our efforts to check whether they contain any references to Ludgate's work. 

    Indeed, more generally, we would welcome any information leading to the discovery of other pre-1960 references to Ludgate, beyond the one we are aware of in Maurice Wilkes' book Automatic Digital Computers (Methuen, 1956).

    Cheers

    Brian Randell

    —

    School of Computing, Newcastle University, 1 Science Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE4 5TG
    EMAIL = Brian.Randell at ncl.ac.uk   PHONE = +44 191 208 7923
    URL =  https://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/staff/profile/brianrandell.html