Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.
Terry Pratchett
The binary numeral system, used internally by all modern computers, is not new. It was used by the old Egyptians in the 18th century BC and reinvented at the beginning of the 17th century in Europe by Thomas Harriot. In the second half of the 17th century, Leibniz not only created the first mechanical calculator, suitable for addition, subtraction, and multiplication but also dreamed about the logical machine and binary calculator. When the time came for the practical realization of a modern computer around 1930, it seems the first man, who proposed the binary system to be used, was the French polytechnician and researcher—Raymond Louis Andre Valtat (1898-1986).
In the 1920s Valtat studied at École Polytechnique, where he was a student of the famous French mathematician Maurice d’Ocagne (1862-1938), professor, member of the French Academy of Sciences, and rapporteur on all subjects concerning calculus and calculators.
In 1936 d’Ocagne presented to the Academy of Sciences a paper, written by Valtat—Machine à calculer fondée sur l’emploi de la numération binaire, in which he advocated the usage of the binary system in a calculating apparatus in comparison to the decimal system, for instance, that the computation of a square root is straightforward in this system. In his presentation, d’Ocagne noted that Raymond Valtat who, since 1931 owns several patents, is the first person to have proposed using the binary system in mechanical calculators. Interestingly, d’Ocagne recognizes the so-called chessboard calculator described by Napier in 1614, in Raymond Valtat’s project of a binary calculator.
Following the publication of Valtat’s works by Maurice d’Ocagne, another French researcher, Louis Couffignal very quickly reacted and presented his confidential works on using binary numeration in calculating machines.
Raymond Valtat probably started his work on calculating machines in the middle 1920s, and he got several patents related to statistical machines and accounting machines in the late 1920s and 1930s (for example, see US patent 1777947). He turned his attention to binary calculators around 1930 because in 1931 he applied for French (pat. Nr. FR737538) and Switzerland (pat. Nr. CH183498) patents, in which he stated: This invention proposes improvements in or relating to calculating and like apparatus, consisting in providing in the apparatus, devices referred to in this description, as “Codifiers”, used to transform the numbers displayed on the keyboard of ordinary machines in numbers expressed in the binary system, to carry out the operations on the binary numbers and to transform the results back to the usual decimal system, using devices referred to as “Translators”.
After French and Switzerland patents, filed in 1931, in 1932 Valtat applied for patents in Germany (see Patentschrift 664012), Great Britain (410129), and Canada (CA330142). After WWII he continued his work on binary calculators and in 1948 he applied for a USA patent for a Binary Network Type Calculating Machine (see US patent 2620974).
In the British patent, Valtat stated: Calculations are performed by first converting the items, factors, &c. from the decimal system into the binary (or ternary) notation, performing the calculation in this system and then translating the result into the decimal system. The calculating devices may consequently be of a simplified character, the counting elements consisting only of parts occupying an operative position or a non-operative position to represent unity or nought respectively.
In the 1950s Valtat turned his attention and specialized in physics and chemistry, because, in 1960, he founded the Catalyons Laboratory (still existing as a family business, run by his granddaughters), during his research to help his wife who suffered from liver cancer. In this period he got patents for Process for obtaining a solution in a substantially non-electrolyte solvent, Coating elements, Female underwear, a volumetric dosing device, and others.
Source: Napier and binary arithmetics, Michel Mouyssinat