n 1642 Blaise Pascal, at age 19, invented the Pascaline as an aid for his father who was a tax collector. Pascal built 50 of this gear-driven one-function calculator (it could only add) but couldn't sell many because of their exorbitant cost and because they really weren't that accurate (at that time it was not possible to fabricate gears with the required precision). Up until the present age when car dashboards went digital, the odometer portion of a car's speedometer used the very same mechanism as the Pascaline to increment the next wheel after each full revolution of the prior wheel. Pascal was a child prodigy. At the age of 12, he was discovered doing his version of Euclid's thirty-second proposition on the kitchen floor. Pascal went on to invent probability theory, the hydraulic press, and the syringe. Shown below is an 8 digit version of the Pascaline, and two views of a 6 digit version:
Pascal's Pascaline [photo © 2002 IEEE]
A 6 digit model for those who couldn't afford the 8 digit model
A Pascaline opened up so you can observe the gears and cylinders which rotated to display the numerical result
Click on the "Next" hyperlink below to read about the punched card system that was developed for looms for later applied to the U.S. census and then to computers...
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