Arthur Pollen

Arthur Joseph Hungerford Pollen (13 September 1866 – 28 January 1937) was a writer on naval affairs in the early 1900s who recognised the need for a computer-based fire-control system. The system took twelve years to develop but included the world's first electrically powered mechanical analogue computer (called at the time the Argo Clock).

Pollen was born on 13 September 1866, the sixth son and eighth child of eight sons and two daughters born to John Hungerford Pollen and Maria Margaret Pollen. His father being a leading convert to Catholicism along with Cardinal Newman, Arthur was educated at the school which the latter founded in Birmingham, The Oratory School (1878–1884). He then went up to read Modern History at Trinity College, Oxford where he gained a second-class degree in 1888. In 1893 he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn. He then took an interest in parliamentary politics, standing as Radical candidate for the Walthamstow Division of Essex in the General Election of 1895 which he lost; his 4,523 votes to the 6,876 of his opponent, Edmund Widdrington Byrne, MP, QC. After this setback he continued to speak at Liberal Party events, but declined to stand in the by-election brought about by Byrne's resignation in 1897.

On 7 September 1898 he married Maud Beatrice, the only daughter of the leading Conservative politician Joseph Lawrence, (later Sir Joseph Lawrence, Bart.) who was also chairman of Linotype & Machinery Co. Ltd. With Maud he had one daughter, who died aged four, and two sons. In 1898 Pollen was made the managing-director of Linotype, which he ran successfully for the next decade.

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