page_title: Mechanical calculator
section_title: Prototypes and limited runs
hierarchical_section_title: Mechanical calculator / The 19th century / Prototypes and limited runs
caption_attribution_description: English: Detail of an early calculating machine invented by Didier Roth around 1840. This machine is a direct descendant of Pascal's Calculator.
context_page_description: A mechanical calculator, or calculating machine, is a mechanical device used to perform the basic operations of arithmetic automatically. Most mechanical calculators were comparable in size to small desktop computers and have been rendered obsolete by the advent of the electronic calculator.
  Surviving notes from Wilhelm Schickard in 1623 reveal that he designed and had built the earliest of the modern attempts at mechanizing calculation. His machine was composed of two sets of technologies: first an abacus made of Napier's bones, to simplify multiplications and divisions first described six years earlier in 1617, and for the mechanical part, it had a dialed pedometer to perform additions and subtractions. A study of the surviving notes shows a machine that would have jammed after a few entries on the same dial, and that it could be damaged if a carry had to be propagated over a few digits. Schickard abandoned his project in 1624 and never mentioned it again until his death 11 years later in 1635.
  Two decades after Schickard's supposedly failed attempt, in 1642, Blaise Pascal decisively solved these particular problems with his invention of the mechanical calculator.
context_section_description: In 1820, Thomas de Colmar patented the Arithmometer. It was a true four operation machine with a one digit multiplier/divider (The Millionaire calculator released 70 years later had a similar user interface). He spent the next 30 years and 300,000 Francs developing his machine. This design was replaced in 1851 by the simplified arithmometer which was only an adding machine.
  From 1840, Didier Roth patented and built a few calculating machines, one of which was a direct descendant of Pascal's calculator.
  In 1842, Timoleon Maurel invented the Arithmaurel, based on the Arithmometer, which could multiply two numbers by simply entering their values into the machine.
  In 1845, Izrael Abraham Staffel first exhibited a machine that was able to add, subtract, divide, multiply and obtain a square root.
  Around 1854, Andre-Michel Guerry invented the Ordonnateur Statistique, a cylindrical device designed to aid in summarizing the relations among data on moral variables (crime, suicide, etc.)
  In 1872, Frank S. Baldwin in the U.S. invented a pinwheel calculator.
  In 1877 George B. Grant of Boston, MA, began producing the Grant mechanical calculating machine capable of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The machine measured 13x5x7 inches and contained eighty working pieces made of brass and tempered steel. It was first introduced to the public at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.
  In 1883, Edmondson of the UK patented a circular stepped drum machine
caption: Detail of an early calculating machine invented by Didier Roth around 1840.  This machine is a direct descendant of Pascal's Calculator.
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