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A pinwheel calculator is a class of mechanical calculator described as early as 1685, and popular in the 19th and 20th century, calculating via wheels whose number of teeth were adjustable. These wheels, also called pinwheels, could be set by using a side lever which could expose anywhere from 0 to 9 teeth, and therefore when coupled to a ...
Despite the mechanical flaws of the stepped reckoner, it suggested possibilities to future calculator builders. The operating mechanism, invented by Leibniz, called the stepped cylinder or Leibniz wheel, was used in many calculating machines for 200 years, and into the 1970s with the Curta hand calculator.
For forty years the arithmometer was the only type of mechanical calculator available for sale until the industrial production of the more successful Odhner Arithmometer in 1890. [8] The comptometer, introduced in 1887, was the first machine to use a keyboard that consisted of columns of nine keys (from 1 to 9) for each digit.
The 1970s weren't a decade for subtlety. Like the fashion and music of the era, cars were often bold, brash and unapologetically stylish, designed to command attention and dominate the road. This ...
Odhner thought of his machine in 1871 while repairing a Thomas' Arithmometer (which was the only mechanical calculator in production at the time) and decided to replace its heavy, bulky Leibniz cylinder by a lighter, smaller pinwheel disk. This is why the two machines share the same name but look completely different.
In the position shown, the counting wheel meshes with three of the nine teeth of the Leibniz wheel. A Leibniz wheel or stepped drum is a cylinder with a set of teeth of incremental lengths which, when coupled to a counting wheel, can be used in the calculating engine of a class of mechanical calculators.
Vintage photos: 50 memorable Cleveland TV personalities This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Calculator was fun for a math phobic kid in the 1970s Show comments
Pinwheel (shogi), an opening in the game shogi or Japanese chess; Pinwheel (TV channel), a channel which would later turn into Nickelodeon; Pinwheel, a children's show on Nickelodeon that ran from 1977 to 1984; Pinwheel calculator (part of), a type of early mechanical arithmetic machine; Pinwheel escapement, part of a mechanical clock