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The steam-powered automatic flute described by the Book of Ingenious Devices (850) by the Persian-Baghdadi Banū Mūsā brothers may have been the first programmable device. [10] Other early mechanical devices used to perform one or another type of calculations include the planisphere and other mechanical computing devices invented by Al-Biruni ...
From the early 1900s through the 1960s, mechanical calculators dominated the desktop computing market. Major suppliers in the USA included Friden, Monroe, and SCM/Marchant. These devices were motor-driven, and had movable carriages where results of calculations were displayed by dials.
Leonardo da Vinci produced drawings of a device consisting of interlocking cog wheels which can be interpreted as a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction. A working model inspired by this plan was built in 1968 but it remains controversial whether Leonardo really had a calculator in mind. [19]
The stepped reckoner or Leibniz calculator was a mechanical calculator invented by the German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (started in 1673, when he presented a wooden model to the Royal Society of London [2] and completed in 1694). [1]
Mechanical computers reached their zenith during World War II, when they formed the basis of complex bombsights including the Norden, as well as the similar devices for ship computations such as the US Torpedo Data Computer or British Admiralty Fire Control Table. Noteworthy are mechanical flight instruments for early spacecraft, which provided ...
In December 1939 John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry completed their experimental model to prove the concept of the Atanasoff–Berry computer (ABC) which began development in 1937. [40] This experimental model is binary, executed addition and subtraction in octal binary code and is the first binary digital electronic computing device.
The Comptometer was the first commercially successful key-driven mechanical calculator, patented in the United States by Dorr Felt in 1887.. A key-driven calculator is extremely fast because each key adds or subtracts its value to the accumulator as soon as it is pressed and a skilled operator can enter all of the digits of a number simultaneously, using as many fingers as required, making ...
The first American-made pocket-sized calculator, the Bowmar 901B (popularly termed The Bowmar Brain), measuring 5.2 by 3.0 by 1.5 inches (132 mm × 76 mm × 38 mm), came out in the Autumn of 1971, with four functions and an eight-digit red LED display, for US$240, while in August 1972 the four-function Sinclair Executive became the first ...