MATHEMATICS IN GOVERNMENT SERVICE AND INDUSTRY: Some Deductions from the War-Time Experience of the Admiralty Computing Service*

Abstract

IN 1942, Prof. J. A. Carroll, shortly after joining the headquarters staff of the Director of Scientific Research in the Admiralty as assistant director, saw that scientific effort in the Admiralty establishments could not be fully employed in its proper field because scientific men were having to undertake their own computational work. Often, for lack of training in computational mathematics, they spent even more time on this than it needed intrinsically and, more serious still, for lack of internal or external facilities, some investigations requiring extensive computations were foregone. An investigation of the computational needs of establishments by Mr. D. H. Sadler, superintendent of H.M. Nautical Almanac Office, was accordingly arranged. Earlier, the Nautical Almanac Office had been doing large-scale computational work for other Government departments, notably the Ministries of Aircraft Production and Supply, in addition to its navigational work for the Air Ministry; proposals for an inter-departmental computing organisation which had been made earlier by the Office were overtaken by the joint proposals, referred to later. Following Mr. Sadler's report that a considerable amount of computational work could with advantage be centralized, a mathematical section was set up in the Department of Scientific Research and Experiment to deal with this work and with the more difficult mathematical problems which were known to arise in naval establishments and which were being either set aside or tackled by totally inadequate methods. This section became known as the Admiralty Computing Service. Mr. John Todd was responsible for organisation and supervision of this Service. Staff were attached to the Nautical Almanac Office to carry out the actual computations under the direction of Mr. Sadler, and arrangements were made whereby scientific workers in the universities and elsewhere could be employed as consultants.