Samuel Morland

Sir Samuel Morland, 1st Baronet, also written Moreland, was an English academic, diplomat, spy, inventor and mathematician of the seventeenth century, a polymath credited with early developments in computing, hydraulics and steam power, born in Berkshire in 1625 and dying on 30 December 1695. The son of the rector of Sulhamstead Bannister, he was educated at Winchester College and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow in 1649, devoted much time to mathematics, and was proficient in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and French. As a tutor at Cambridge he first met Samuel Pepys, who became a lifelong acquaintance. He then entered public service, travelled to Sweden in 1653, was sent by Cromwell to Italy in 1655 to protest against the treatment of the Waldensians, and wrote The History of the Evangelical Churches of the Valleys of Piemont, published in 1658. As secretary to John Thurloe he became disillusioned with the Commonwealth and worked as a double agent toward the Restoration.