text: In the 1950s, British electrical engineers would rarely use a digital computer, and if they did, it would be to solve some complicated equation outside the scope of analogue computers. To a certain extent, engineers were deterred by the difficulty and the time taken to program a particular problem. Furthermore, the varied and often unique problems that arise in electrical design practice, together with the degree of uncertainty of the numerical data of many problems, accentuated this tendency. On 10 April 1956, Dent and Brian Birtwistle presented their paper, "", to the Convention on Digital Computer Techniques at the Institution of Electrical Engineers. The paper was intended to show, by describing three relatively simple applications, that the digital computer could be a useful aid to the electrical design engineer. The three example problems were:
  The Ferranti Mark 1 computer at the University of Manchester was used for the calculations in the three problems. Dent was allowed to use the university's library of subroutines, from which the following were taken and incorporated into the programs:
  ** Exponential.
  ** Sine and cosine.
  ** Square root.
  ** Solution of simultaneous equations.
  ** Inversion of matrices.
  ** Integration of differential equations by Runge–Kutta methods.
  The first problem of calculating the impulse voltage distribution on transformer windings took about five hours of machine time. Conversely, a hand calculation, using a method described by Thomas John Lewis in "" (1954), took around three months. The use of a computer in the second problem allowed for a more accurate solution as it was possible to include nonlinear magnetic characteristics in the calculation. In the last problem, the torque and speed curves for the synchronous motors were calculated in around fifteen minutes. Their paper was one of the first to recognise that highspeed digital computers could provide considerable assistance to the electrical design engineer by carrying out automatically the optimum design of products.
  Significant research had been devoted to determining a transformer's internal transient voltage distribution. Early attempts were hampered by computational limitations encountered when solving large numbers of coupled differential equations with analogue computers. It was not until Dent, with Hartill and Miles, in "" (1958), recognised the limitations of the analogue models and developed a digital computer model, and associated program, where nonuniformity in the transformer windings could be introduced and any input voltage applied.