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Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar (May 5, 1785 – March 12, 1870) was a French inventor and entrepreneur best known for designing, patenting, and manufacturing the first commercially successful mechanical calculator, known as the Arithmometer.
The arithmometer (French: arithmomètre) was the first digital mechanical calculator strong enough and reliable enough to be used daily in an office environment. This calculator could add and subtract two numbers directly and could perform long multiplications and divisions effectively by using a movable accumulator for the result.
In 1878 Burkhardt, of Germany, was the first to manufacture a clone of Thomas' arithmometer. Until then Thomas de Colmar had been the only manufacturer of desktop mechanical calculators in the world and he had manufactured about 1,500 machines. [64] Eventually twenty European companies will manufacture clones of Thomas' arithmometer until WWII.
In St. Petersburg, Russia, Wilgott Theophil Odhner invented his arithmometer in 1874 and in 1890 [7] it became the first pinwheel calculator to be mass-manufactured. Its industrial production started in Odhner's workshop: W.T. Odhner, Maschinenfabrik & Metallgiesserei and then moved to the Odhner-Gill factory (фабрика Однера ...
Detail of an arithmometer built before 1851. The one-digit multiplier cursor (ivory top) is the leftmost cursor. Around 1820, Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar created what would over the rest of the century become the first successful, mass-produced mechanical calculator, the Thomas Arithmometer.
In 1820, Thomas de Colmar designed his arithmometer, the first mechanical calculator strong enough and reliable enough to be used daily in an office environment. It is not clear whether he ever saw Leibniz's device, but he either re-invented it or utilized Leibniz's invention of the step drum.
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His job there was to fix the so-called Thomas Arithmometers, named after their designer in the 1820s. The term arithmometer covered mechanical calculating devices that were able to perform all the four arithmetic operations. Odhner improved and simplified the expensive devices by implementing a different transmission system.