The Space Walk's designer, Philip Robert Vassar Youngman (born: 26 August 1924, Hunstanton, Norfolk – died: 23 May 2007, Taunton, Somerset), known as 'Pip', was a designer and inventor of mechanical apparatus. Around 1969, Youngman was approached by the Open University to adapt a mechanical calculator he had designed, originally prototyped in Lego, into a product suitable for school use. The result was the "Ball Operated Binary Calculator And Tutor" (BOBCAT), a mechanical model for teaching binary arithmetic and the inner workings of the computer, using ball bearings for binary data bits and plastic levers for the calculating logic.