Admiralty Computing Service Collection

The material comprises:

• D1, J.Cossar and A.Erdelyi, Dictionary of Laplace Transforms, Part 1 (Edinburgh University, 1944);
• D2, J.Cossar and A.Erdelyi, Dictionary of Laplace Transforms, Part 2A (Edinburgh University, 1944);
• D3, J.Cossar and A.Erdelyi, Dictionary of Laplace Transforms, Part 2B (Edinburgh University, 1945);
• D4, J.Cossar and A.Erdelyi Dictionary of Laplace Transforms, Part 3A (Edinburgh University, 1945);
• D5, J.Cossar and A.Erdelyi, Dictionary of Laplace Transforms, Part 3B (Edinburgh University, 1946);
• D6, H.Kober (compiler) Dictionary of Conformal Representations, Part 1 (1945);
• D7, H.Kober (compiler) Dictionary of Conformal Representations, Part 2 (1946);
• D8, E.T.Copson, The Asymptotic Expansion of a Function Defined by a Definite Integral or Contour Integral (Dundee University College, 1946).

The Admiralty Computing Service was created in 1943 as an offshoot of the Nautical Almanac Office and was designed to centralize computation within the Admiralty. By 1947 the ACS had performed over one hundred investigations besides dealing with inquiries which required only advisory assistance. Though the ACS was hindered by its limited personnel, machines and scope (officially its services were restricted to the Admiralty), it was an important step along the road to Britain's first national computing centre the National Physical Laboratory Mathematics Division.

The collection is open to any accredited reader.

M. Croarken, Early Scientific Computing in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).