Andrew D. Booth – Britain’s Other “Fourth Man” - History of Computing: Learning from the Past - page 36

of the circumstances in two places [1, 17] attributing it to the College not conferring a
Chair on him. In retrospect this was a massive loss to the College and, from today's
perspective, totally incomprehensible given his key contributions to computer tech-
nology and his substantial research output. Andrew Booth moved to Canada where he
continued his distinguished academic career initially at the University of Saskatche-
wan and subsequently as President of Lakehead University, Ontario.
8 Conclusions
There can be little doubt that Andrew Booth made a major contribution to the early
development of computing. His two main technological contributions are the drum
store and the Booth multiplier. A modified version of his multiplier is still used to-
day in many processors. The design of his APE(X)C computer was used to provide
the key components of the highly successful ICT 1200 computers, primarily used
for commercial data processing. He built and sold low cost, smaller computers
mainly for academic use. His M.2 series, built by his own company Wharf Engi-
neering Ltd, were used successfully to teach programming in several London uni-
versity colleges.
In the area of applications he devoted much time to the processing of X-ray crystal-
lography data. As his academic independence increased he and his wife contributed to
a number of fields notably the early development of natural language processing
which is acknowledged in that community.
Andrew Booth is largely unknown outside the specialised world of the computer
historian but the author believes that he deserves greater recognition by anyone whose
computer writes to their hard disk or executes a multiplication instruction.
References
1. Evans, C.: Pioneers of Computing. Audio interview with A D Booth, Pioneers of Comput-
ing No 9. In: Science, Museum, London (1975) (unpublished)
2. Booth, A.D.: Fourier Technique in X-ray Organic Structure Analysis. Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, Cambridge (1948)
3. Booth, A.D., Britten, K.H.V.: General Considerations in the Design of an All Purpose
Electronic Digital Computer, 2nd edn. Birkbeck College, London (1947) (unpublished
Report)
4. Birkbeck College, London. Annual Report for August 1947, pp. 1-2
5. Birkbeck College, London. Annual Report for September 1948, p. 7
6. Booth, A.D.: DEC - Desk Electronic Computer, Science Museum Archives (1950)
(unpublished report to DSIR)
7. Kitz, N.: A Discussion of Automatic Digital High-Speed Calculating Machines with spe-
cial reference to SEC - A Simple Electronic Computer. MSc (Eng.) thesis. Birkbeck Col-
lege, London (1951)
8. Birkbeck College, London. Annual Report for March 1952, p. 22
9. Shirley, S.: A Signed Binary Multiplication Technique. Quarterly Journal of Mechanical
and Applied Mathematics 4(Pt2), 236-240 (1951)