Antiquities (1)

The first real adding machine: the Pascaline (1647) invented by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal. A series of stylus-operated wheels bearing numbers from 0 to 9 are so geared that each wheel advances one number when the wheel to the right completed a full revolution. Thus, both additions and substractions are possible.

Very early mechanical calculator (1676) constructed by the German mathematician Von Leibniz. The machine has two essential elements. The first a collection of pin-wheels arranged for adding and the second a new feature of stepped cog-wheels movable as to allow any number of teeth from 1 to 9 to engage with the addingsection.

The first machine to perform multiplication by a direct method was invented by Leon Bollee in 1887. The essential feature of this machine was a many-tongued plate, constituting in relief the ordinary multiplication table of Pythagoras. Though excellent in action, only a few of the machines were sold, owing partly to the high price.

Between 1850 and 1887 many attempts were made to develop a calculating machine that would use keys as means to enter data. In Europe, key-driven machines were made by many manufacturers. The adding machine of T. Hill (1857) is a thin wooden machine. Here a replica of one of the first prototypes. The machine had slow carry mechanisms and lacked an efficient way to control the momentum applied to the wheels by the key action.

In 1853 the Swedish contructors George Scheutz and his son Edvard built the first working difference engine which was partly inspired by Babbage's Difference Engine. The Scheutz calculator was also the first calculator with printing capabilities. Due to their automatic sequential approach, difference engines are considered to be precursors of the modern programmable computing machines.

Arthur Burkhardt founded the German calculating machine industry in 1878. The Saxonia was one of 14 calculating machines introduced in Europe and America between 1895 and 1913. Utilizing the stepped-reckoner principle of the Thomas de Colmar Arithmometer, the Saxonia was a commercial calculator with addition and multiplication capabilities.