Beschreibung:

COMRIE, Leslie John (1893-1950). The application of the Hollerith tabulating machine to Brown's tables of the moon . Offprint from Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 92 (May 1932). Original gray printed wrappers. The first use of a punched-card tabulating system in a purely scientific application -- calculating the position of the moon at noon and midnight from 1935 to the end of the twentieth century. From Gutenberg to the Internet 4.1. OOC 266. COMRIE. On the application of the Brunsviga-Dupla calculating machine to double summation with finite differences . Offprint from Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 88 (March 1928). Original gray printed wrappers. Includes a brief history of difference machines from Babbage onward, and detailed instructions on how to use the Brunsviga-Dupla calculating machine in differencing operations. When OOC was written, OCLC cited one copy at the United States Naval Observatory. OOC 257. SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING SERVICE. Scientific Computing Service. Offered by L. J. Comrie, M.A, Ph.D. London, n.d. [1937]. Original blue printed wrappers. The SCS was the world's first independent commercial computing service bureau specializing in scientific computing. The above brochure was written by Comrie, who stated that "I am endeavouring to offer the scientific public an entirely new service -- namely computations of a scientific or technical nature, done by trained professional computers using, whenever possible, the calculating and accounting machines that are now available." An appendix at the end lists Comrie's publications in the field of computing. OOC 273. SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING SERVICE. Scientific Computing Service Limited ... A description of its activities, equipment and staff . N.p, 1938. Original blue printed wrappers. This brochure, published after the business was incorporated a year after its foundation, contains a list of the Scientific Computing Service's principal activities -- which included scientific calculation, table making, statistical analysis, and the numerical solution of differential equations -- as well as descriptions of the adding, multiplying, and punched-card machines in use by the Service. At the end is a bibliography of "Publications by members of the staff"; all but two of the works listed are by. From Gutenberg to the Internet 4.5. OOC 274. Comrie pioneered the use of commercial accounting machines in scientific applications, especially in the production of mathematical tables for astronomy, navigation, and other purposes, and in the 1930s set up the world's first computing service bureau for scientific computing, using human computers operating electric calculating machines. In 1925 Comrie joined the Nautical Almanac Office in England, becoming deputy supervisor the following year. He introduced the standard equinox, which provided a fixed frame of reference for the computation of the orbits of comets and minor planets (OOC 255 included in this lot). The annual set of navigational tables published in the Nautical Almanac was the direct linear successor of tables issued without interruption from 1767-1831 by the Commissioners of Longitude, and from 1832-1959 by the Lord Commissioners of the Admiralty. It was often called the Seaman's Bible. "The Nautical Almanac was not computed directly by the Royal Observatory, but by a number of freelance human computers dotted around Great Britain. The calculations were performed twice, independently, by two computers, and checked by a third 'comparator.' Many of these human computers were retired clerks or clergymen with a facility for figures and a reputation for reliability who worked from home. We know almost nothing of these anonymous drudges. Probably the only one to escape oblivion was the Reverend Malachy Hitchins, an eighteenth-century Cornish clergyman who was a computer and comparator for the Nautical Almanac for a period of forty years. A lifetime of computation dedication earned him a place i