Sir Samuel Morland
Date of Birth: 1625
Date of Death: Dec. 30, 1695
Profession: Diplomats; Inventors; Mathematicians;
Government officials; Statesmen; Scientists
Text: Biography from Leaders of the Information Age
(2003)
Copyright (c) by The H. W. Wilson Company. All rights reserved.
Morland, Samuel
1625-Dec. 30, 1695 Inventor of mechanical calculators
The 17th-century English diplomat Sir Samuel Morland
invented three mechanical calculators: a trigonometrical calculating
machine, an adding machine, and a mechanical version of John Napier's
"multiplying bones"--a set of graduated rods that could be used to
multiply and divide using logarithms. While not the first mechanical
calculators invented, they were the first to be commercially marketed
in Europe. His trigonometrical calculating machine was considered a
vast improvement over any other machine then available for calculating
navigation at sea. His adding machine was a pocket-sized mechanical
forerunner of contemporary electronic calculators. His multiplying
machine proved to be complementary to his adding machine; when combined
they allowed for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
Though Morland's machines were considered more of a curiosity in his
day than practical, everyday devices, they are significant for
providing a bridge from earlier mechanical devices, such as Napier's
bones, to modern electronic calculators.
Samuel Morland was born in 1625 in Sulhamstead
Bannister, Berkshire, England, the son of Thomas Morland, the rector of
Sulhamstead Bannister. He was educated at Winchester College from 1639
to 1644, and then at Magdalene College, part of Cambridge University.
Though he hailed from a religious family, he earned his bachelor of
arts in mathematics, instead of theology, from Magdalene in 1648. In
1649 he became a fellow of the college and continued his education
there, receiving his master's degree, in 1652. While studying for his
postgraduate degree, he became good friends with Samuel Pepys, from
whose diary historians have uncovered information about Morland's
personal life.
After leaving Cambridge, in 1653, Morland became
deeply immersed in the political turmoil surrounding Oliver Cromwell's
overthrow of King Charles II and the establishment of the English
Commonwealth. As a Cromwell supporter, Morland found favor in the
Commonwealth government and joined the diplomatic staff of ambassador
Bulstrode Whitelocke. Their first diplomatic mission was to Sweden, in
1653, where they arranged a commercial treaty between England and Queen
Christina's court. As a great supporter of the sciences, the Swedish
queen frequently brought esteemed scientists and philosophers to her
court to discuss their work and present their inventions and findings.
In 1652 the inventor Blaise Pascal had sent the queen a copy of his
adding machine, which she kept on display to show visiting officials;
historians believe it is very likely that she would have shown the
machine to Morland as a visiting ambassador.
A year after returning from Sweden, Morland was
again sent by the Commonwealth government on a goodwill mission, this
time to the court of the duke of Savoy, in Italy. On his return from
Italy he stopped in Paris, France, to perform some diplomatic services
with the court of Louis XIV. While his diplomatic mission was not much
of a success, he established contacts with scientists and scholars in
both the French court and the French scientific community. After
Morland married his first wife, Susanne de Milleville, the daughter of
Daniel Milleville, the Baron of Boissay, in 1657, his association with
France was further solidified. Over the next several years he and his
wife made a number of trips to France and very likely became acquainted
with Rene Grillet, the clockmaker to Louis XIV and inventor of his own
calculating machine.
Morland's relationship with the Cromwell government
deteriorated after he became aware of a plot to assassinate Charles II
and his brother. After warning Charles of the plot against him, he
began working as a spy for the monarchy, hoping to achieve its
restoration. After the restoration of the king, charges were brought
against Morland for having worked with Cromwell, but he received a full
pardon in 1660, and later that same year, he was knighted by Charles II
and made a baronet. Though he never received the financial help he
wanted from the king, he was provided with a pension--enough of an
income to focus his energies on the building of mechanical devices.
Morland's trigonometry machine, less than a foot
long on each side, was made of brass and coated with silver on its
front surface. It combined a ruler with two simple gears turned by two
handles on the lower right- and left-hand sides of the machine; the
handle on the left turned the machine's large central circle, while the
one on the right moved the horizontal bar across the center of the
large circle up and down across the face. The two arms of the sector
were arranged so that one was locked to the central disc, and the other
could move around the rotation of the central wheel. The disc and the
face of the instrument were marked in such a manner as to measure
hours, minutes, and degrees, or to show the directions of a compass. As
Michael A. Williams noted in A History of Computing Technology (1997):
"This device, because of its mechanical settings, had obvious
advantages over the elementary sector when being used for navigational
calculations at sea. In addition, the mechanical settings would often
allow much finer readings from the scales than were possible when using
a simple pair of dividers to transfer readings from one scale to the
next."
Morland's adding machine was designed to add English
money and was composed of eight dials that were moved by a simple
stylus. (The non-decimal dials for farthings, pence, and shillings were
on the lower half of the device, thereby allowing the upper part to be
used for adding decimal numbers up to five places.) As Williams
explained: "If it was desired to add four pounds to a sum already
registered on the machine, you simply put the stylus into the hole at
the position marked four on the dial corresponding to the units digit
of the pounds register (upper right-hand dial) and then rotated it in a
clockwise direction until the stylus was at the top of the dial. The
result of the operation could be seen through the small window at the
12 o'clock position on each dial." However, since there was no carry
instrument on the machine, Morland built several auxiliary dials above
each of the major dials, so that every time a major dial moved from 9
to 0, a tooth inside the machine would advance the carry dial. Williams
goes on to note: "Morland's adding machine was . . . both simple in
construction and reliable in operation as long as the operator
remembered to add the carries forward at the end of the normal adding
operation." Morland advertised the pocket-sized device in the London
Gazette, on April 16, 1668, though few were actually sold.
Morland's final calculating machine, a mechanical
version of Napier's bones, was a flat, brass dish with a hinged,
perforated gate and circular discs carved with numbers. This was
mounted on semicircular pins. The discs themselves were circular
versions of Napier's bones, the numbers set around the edge of a disc
instead of a straight line. (In total the machine had 30 discs for
standard multiplication, plus five more for finding square and cube
roots.) Williams detailed how the machine worked: "To find the
single-digit products of a given number, for example, 1234, the disks
representing these digits would be removed from the upper pins and
placed over the semi-circular pins on the lower portion of the
instrument. The hinged gate would then be lowered over the disks, and
the key would be turned until the small pointer indicated that the
proper multiple would be showing through the windows in the hinged
gate. The act of turning the key would, through an elementary
rack-and-pinion mechanism, rotate the disks under the gate and move the
pointer along the product indicator. The digits of the required product
could then be found by adding together the pairs of digits showing
through each gate window."
In 1671 Morland built a speaking trumpet that he
claimed would allow a conversation to be conducted over a distance of
three-quarters of a mile. He also invented the diagonal and balance
barometer. But his central preoccupation was in the field of
hydrostatics. In the 17th century many scientists were interested in
developing mechanical ways to raise water. Morland's invention was
comprised of a cistern from which air was expelled by a charge of
gunpowder, causing water to rise to fill the vacuum thus produced. In
the London Gazette of July 30, 1681, as quoted in the Dictionary of
Scientific Biography (1974), the author described a demonstration near
Windsor castle, during which Morland brought the water--tinted with a
vat of red wine to make it more visible--up in a continuous stream at
the rate of 60 barrels an hour, "with the strength of eight men." In
1681, recognizing his success, the king proclaimed him to be "Master of
Mechanicks."
Sir Samuel Morland married at least four times. He
married his second wife, Carola Harnett, on October 26, 1670. After she
died, in 1676, he married Anne Fielding on November 16, 1676. She died
in 1680, and he married Mary Aylip, on February 1, 1687. He was
survived by only one of his children, Samuel, who became the family's
second and final baronet. Morland went blind in the last three years of
his life and died on December 30, 1695, in Hammersmith, where he had
retired.--C. M.
Suggested Reading: Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 1974; Cortada,
James W. Historical Dictionary of Data Processing: Biographies, 1987;
Williams, Michael A. A History of Computing Technology, 1997