Luigi Dadda (April 29, 1923 – October 26, 2012) was an Italian

computer engineer Computer engineering (CE, CoE, or CpE) is a branch of engineering specialized in developing computer hardware and software. It integrates several fields of electrical engineering, electronics engineering and computer science. Computer engine ...

, best known for the design of the

Dadda multiplier The Dadda multiplier is a hardware binary multiplier design invented by computer scientist Luigi Dadda in 1965. It uses a selection of Adder (electronics), full and half adders to sum the partial products in stages (the Dadda tree or Dadda reductio ...

and as one of the first researchers on modern

computer A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...

s in Italy. He was rector at the

Politecnico di Milano The Polytechnic University of Milan (, abbreviated as PoliMi) is a university in Milan, Italy. It is the largest technical university in the country, with about 40,000 enrolled students. The university offers undergraduate, graduate, and higher ...

technical university from 1972 to 1984, collaborating on research at the same university until 2012. He was a Life Fellow of the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

. He studied

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

at the Politecnico di Milano and graduated in 1947 with a thesis on signal transmission, a

microwave Microwave is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths shorter than other radio waves but longer than infrared waves. Its wavelength ranges from about one meter to one millimeter, corresponding to frequency, frequencies between 300&n ...

radio bridge between the cities of

Turin Turin ( , ; ; , then ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is main ...

and

Trieste Trieste ( , ; ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital and largest city of the Regions of Italy#Autonomous regions with special statute, autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, as well as of the Province of Trieste, ...

. His research interests then turned to models and analog computers as an assistant professor, and in 1953 he received a grant from the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

in order to study at the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...

Pasadena Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial d ...

. In the interim, the Politecnico di Milano requested funding for a digital computer under the

Marshall Plan The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe. The United States transferred $13.3 billion (equivalent to $ in ) in economic recovery pr ...

; the request was granted in the sum of US$120,000, and the rector of the time, Prof. Cassinis, invited him to join the design team at the Computer Research Corporation of San Diego, since the machine, a Computer Research Company model CRC 102A, would not be maintained by the vendor after delivery to Italy, and it therefore needed to have in-house expertise on it. Dadda complied, thus forfeiting the NSF grant and transferring to San Diego. He would travel to Italy on an old Liberty merchant ship along with the precious machine, packed in cotton balls in order to protect its valves from dangerous vibrations. Upon disembarkation in Genoa, the machine was declared with customs as an "electrical appliance", as the only computer machine in the taxonomy of goods used at the time was a "

punchcard A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a stiff paper-based medium used to store digital information via the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Developed over the 18th to 20th centuries, punched cards were widel ...

machine", but a

punched card A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a stiff paper-based medium used to store digital information via the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Developed over the 18th to 20th centuries, punched cards were widel ...

reader was not supplied with the computer, so it didn't fit the categorisation. An additional problem was that, at the time, Italy's taxation imposed the application of a small paper slip similar to a stamp (proving payment of duties) on each and every valve used in the machine. Since dismantling the machine to apply the slips was out of question, the customs allowed Dadda to pay the tax as a forfeit and gave him a pack of slips to apply on the machine "as soon as possible". Those slips remained in a drawer in Dadda's desk. The machine reached, at last, the Politecnico di Milano in September 1954, where it was activated in the 2SUD back room, and became the first working digital computer in Italy and continental Europe. In the following years, the research activity of Dadda focused on the use of the machine for scientific and industrial applications, and training researchers and students of the Politecnico in Computer Science, where he created and taught the first courses on the subject. Notably, he studied how to enhance the ALUs of the machines, proposing solutions such as the

, which significantly enhanced performance of those circuits. He reached the status of a full professor at the Politecnico in 1960 and was assigned the

Electrical Engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

chair from 1962. He then moved to studying

Petri net A Petri net, also known as a place/transition net (PT net), is one of several mathematical modeling languages for the description of distributed systems. It is a class of discrete event dynamic system. A Petri net is a directed bipartite graph t ...

as a paradigm for the design of complex control systems. In

signal processing Signal processing is an electrical engineering subfield that focuses on analyzing, modifying and synthesizing ''signals'', such as audio signal processing, sound, image processing, images, Scalar potential, potential fields, Seismic tomograph ...

he proposed new systems for convolution. He has served as the director of the Computing Center and then of the Computer Architectures Lab of the "Dipartimento di Elettronica ed Informazione" of the Politecnico di Milano university. He was a founding member of the Italian Association for Computing in 1961 (and President between 1967 and 1970) and a co-founder and director of the distinguished Italian journal of computer science: Rivista di Informatica. He was the proposer of the European Information Network, realized by CEE under the project ''COST 11''. Between 1980 and 1982 he chaired the committee for science and technology of the

President of the Council of Ministers of Italy The prime minister of Italy, officially the president of the Council of Ministers (), is the head of government of the Italian Republic. The office of president of the Council of Ministers is established by articles 92–96 of the Constitut ...

. He served as the president of the ALARI Institute at the

Università della Svizzera Italiana The (USI, ''University of Italian-speaking Switzerland''), sometimes referred to as the University of Lugano in English-speaking contexts, is a public Swiss university established in 1995, with campuses in Lugano, Mendrisio and Bellinzona (Canto ...

in the Italian-speaking canton of Switzerland for over a decade. He was member of the Technical Committee and advisor in the Board of directors of

CSELT Telecom Italia Lab S.p.A. (formerly Centro Studi e Laboratori Telecomunicazioni S.p.A.; CSELT) is an Italian research center for telecommunication based in Torino, the biggest in Italy and one of the most important in Europe. It played a major r ...

. He died on October 26, 2012, in Milano, Italy at the age of 89. In 2016 the prestigious "IEEE Milestone award" has been assigned to his memory in recognition of his contributions.Award ceremony
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Further reading