Thomas Fowler (inventor)

Thomas Fowler (1777 to 1843) was an English inventor born in Great Torrington, Devon, best known for the thermosiphon that formed the basis of early hot water central heating. Largely self taught, with a particular interest in mathematics, he worked as a printer, bookseller and bank manager and was treasurer of the Torrington Poor Law Union. To ease the rates calculations that work required he published tables of binary and balanced ternary numbers in 1838, and in 1840 he built a mechanical calculating machine that worked in balanced ternary arithmetic, six feet long and made of wood. An improved model of 1842 was shown for a time in the museum of King's College London. The machine did not survive, but a replica based on a description by Augustus De Morgan now stands in the Science Museum in London.