The glory goes to the Frenchman Blaise Pascal who in 1642 invented at the age of 21 the Calculating Machine.
Blaise Pascal who was a gifted lad from childhood wanted to spend
more time with his father, a tax collector. Since dad was busy at
home in adding columns of numbers Blaise decided to invent a machine
which will free his father from this tedious task. This Machine (20'
x 4' x 3') was of metal with 8 dials manipulated by a stylus.
Today there are about 50 surviving machines manufactured by Blaise
Pascal most of them can be seen in the large science museums.
There were two prior attempts to create such a machine which were discovered only 'recently'.
One is of Wilhelm Schickard who invented a mechanical calculator in 1623. Apparently only two prototypes were built and their location is unknown (if they survived at all). Only in the 1950's when letters of Schickard were discovered was this information revealed. From diagrams in these letters it was possible to reconstruct his machine.
An exhibition to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Wilhelm Schickard's birth (1592 - 1635) was held in Herrenberg, a small town in the southwest of Germany in May-93.
An even earlier attempt was made by none other than Leonardo da Vinci. In 1967 some of his notes were found in the National Museum of Spain, which included a description of a machine bearing a certain resemblance to Pascal's machine. A model of da Vinci's machine was made with the help of these notes.
Between Pascal's invention (1624) and 1820 there were about 25 manufacturers of calculating machines. Most of them were the work of one man, few of them worked correctly, and even less actually reached the manufacturing line.
The first calculating machine which was produced in large numbers was invented by the Frenchman Thomas de Colmar in 1820.
His machine which was based on a 'stepped drum' mechanism had many clones and was produced as late as 1920. It was called the 'Arithmometer'
The next 'generation' of calculating machine came from a Swedish inventor Willgodt T. Odhner.
His machine incorporated a 'pin wheel' mechanism. This mechanism was highly successful and soon it took over the place of the 'Arithmometer'. There were dozens of companies which incorporated the Odhner mechanism. In fact I have a Russian machine named 'Felix' which was manufactured in 1972 !!! looking like the Odhner machine from 1905.
There were hundreds of manufacturers which produced an amazing variety of calculating machines up to the late 1960's. Only then did they surrender gracefully to the appearance of the electrical calculating machine and later to the electronic computer.
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