P.S.: The
first calculatin machine might be the one of
Wilhelm Schickard from 1623.
Johann Kepler tried to build some kind of calculator too I think.
Does Blaise Pascal's box count?
Yes, but Pascal was born in 1623 so Schickard's device most likely beats
whatever Pascal developed in his lifetime (I think he was 18 when he
invented it).
Late-comers, all of them. My vote for the earliest computer is the
Antikythera Device, a bronze mechanical lunar month calculator built in
Greece about 80AD.
Shickard's "Calculating Clock" was the next mechanical calculator of record
in 1623, followed by Blaise Pascal's "Pascaline" in 1642, Samuel
Morland's
mechanical calculator in 1666, Gottfried Leibnez' "Stepped Reckoner" in
1674, Phillip-Malthus Hahn's calculating machines (the first sold
commercially) in 1774, and the third Earl of Stanhope's multiplying
calculator in 1777. The first mass-produced calculating machine was Thomas
de Colmar's "Arithmometer" in 1820.
Personally, I'm not interested in collecting anything later than that...
;)
R.
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