Samuel Morland

Sir Samuel Morland (1625 to 1695) was an English academic, diplomat, spy, inventor and mathematician of the seventeenth century, described by his source as a polymath credited with early developments in computing, hydraulics and steam power. He was educated at Winchester College and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he became a Fellow in 1649, and later served in Commonwealth and royal service, including espionage and cryptography. His calculating devices included a non-decimal adding machine for English pounds, shillings, pence and farthings, a machine for trigonometric calculations, and an arithmetical machine regarded by some as the world's first multiplying machine, an example of which is in the Science Museum in South Kensington. He also designed a cryptographic machine, may have invented columnar transposition in the 1660s, and built pumps, a speaking trumpet and improvements to the water supply of Windsor Castle.