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Pascaline (also known as the arithmetic machine or Pascal's calculator) is a mechanical calculator invented by Blaise Pascal in 1642. Pascal was led to develop a calculator by the laborious arithmetical calculations required by his father's work as the supervisor of taxes in Rouen . [ 2 ]
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid (into which work the young Pascal had been recruited), Pascal, not yet 19, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline.
The 17th century marked the beginning of the history of mechanical calculators, as it saw the invention of its first machines, including Pascal's calculator, in 1642. [4] [16] Blaise Pascal had invented a machine which he presented as being able to perform computations that were previously thought to be only humanly possible. [17]
Pascaline, 1642 – Blaise Pascal's arithmetic machine primarily intended as an adding machine which could add and subtract two numbers directly, as well as multiply and divide by repetition. Stepped Reckoner, 1672 – Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's mechanical calculator that could add, subtract, multiply, and divide.
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]
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According to Grillet, he was inspired by Blaise Pascal's work with calculating machines to combine the Pascaline with Napier's bones, and build a machine that could perform both addition and multiplication. Grillet displayed his machine at fairs in France and the Netherlands between 1673 and 1681.
A Brief History of Computing, by Stephen White. An excellent computer history site; the present article is a modified version of his timeline, used with permission. The Evolution of the Modern Computer (1934 to 1950): An Open Source Graphical History, article from Virtual Travelog