author
Arthur Joseph Hungerford Pollen
1866–1937
Best remembered as a sharp writer on naval affairs and an inventive mind behind early battleship fire-control systems, this English journalist and businessman moved easily between politics, technology, and public debate. His career gives a vivid glimpse of how ideas, industry, and military change collided in the years before the First World War.
1 Audiobook
The British Navy in Battle
by Arthur Joseph Hungerford Pollen
About the author
Arthur Joseph Hungerford Pollen was born in 1866 and died in 1937. He is generally remembered as an English journalist, businessman, and commentator on naval affairs who developed an advanced fire-control system for battleships before the First World War, including the Argo Clock, an early electrically powered analogue computer.
Although trained as a barrister, he built a varied career that reached well beyond the law. Sources describe him as a businessman and inventor as well as a public writer on naval questions, and his work made him a notable figure in debates about modern naval gunnery and technology in the early twentieth century.
Pollen also wrote books, including The British Navy in Battle, and his life sits at an interesting crossroads of engineering, journalism, and military history. For readers drawn to authors with practical experience as well as strong opinions, he offers the perspective of someone who tried not only to explain a changing world, but to help design it.