Pascaline

The first calculator or adding machine to be produced in any quantity and actually used was the Pascaline, or Arithmetic Machine , designed and built by the French mathematician-philosopher Blaise Pascal between 1642 and 1644. It could only do addition and subtraction, with numbers being entered by manipulating its dials. Pascal invented the machine for his father, a tax collector, so it was the first business machine, too (if one does not count the abacus). He built 50 of them over the next 10 years.

 

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) France, develops a mechanism to calculate with 8 figures and carrying of 10's , 100's, and 1000's etc. The machine is called the 'Pascaline'. While several models were completed, Pascal's machine  was more likely to be found in the living rooms of their owners as a conversation piece rather than in the office. Pascal according to his memoirs develops the machine because he had to help his father with his work as tax receiver. The calculations are done with a kind of Abax, using little stones to add and subtract. This is boredom Pascal said and started to make the a machine that later became known as the Pascaline. The genius of the machine is that Pascal realized how the tens and hundreds could be carried  This had to be solved first if one could work with numbers larger than 10 with the help of a machine

Pascal used the following principle:

 

When a gear with ten teeth made one rotation (tens) a second gear shift one tooth until that gear rotated ten times (hundreds) that shifts another gear (thousands) etc. This principle is still used in odometers in cars, pumps of petrol stations, and your electricity meters at home. The numbers to be added are set up via some turning discs on the bottom. After crunching a handle the answer appeared in a window. In this way the machine only could add. Subtracting required some adaptations to it so it counted "backwards". Division and multiplication can be done by repeating the adding or subtractions. This is the way most mechanical calculators still work!

 

 


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