11.9.1 - THE BIRTH OF MECHANICAL CALCULATORS

In 1600, the British mathematician John Napier invented the logarithm when he developed a multiplication table.
Forty years later the French mathematician, Blasé Pascal built one of the first adding machines. Basically it consists of a set of wheels assembled in parallel axis when changing their positions were able to display the adding results in a sequence of windows located in the cover of the machine. Fig. 354.
Therefore such early calculating devices were able to process adding operations only.
In 1673, the German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz developed a calculation machine as know as the Leibniz wheel, which execute in automatic way the four mathematical operations: adding, subtraction, division and multiplication. Later on Charles Xavier Thomaz improved the Leibniz’s concept by the development of a device known as arithmometer. Certainly the Thomaz’s device was the forerunner of the factory made calculators whose industrial boom started at the end of XIX century only.
In spite of the great operational improvements involved in such devices they could not be considered as a true analytical calculator, capable to execute a sequence of pre programmed operations required by a computer.
Fig. 354 - The adding machine invented by Pascal as known as "Pascaline"