Mechanical Calculator

A mechanical calculator, or calculating machine, was a device used to perform the basic operations of arithmetic. Most mechanical calculators were comparable in size to small desktop computers and have been rendered obsolete by the advent of the electronic calculator.

The mechanical calculator was invented in 1642 by Blaise Pascal, it was called Pascal's Calculator or Pascaline. The first commercially successful device, Thomas' arithmometer, was manufactured from 1851. The first machine with columns of keys, the comptometer, was introduced in 1887 while 10 key calculators and electric motors appeared in 1902. The use of electric motors allowed for the design of very powerful machines during the first half of the 20th century. In 1961, A full-keyboard machine, the Anita from Sumlock comptometer Ltd., became the first desktop mechanical calculator to receive an all electronic calculator engine, creating the link in between these two industries and marking the beginning of its decline. The production of mechanical calculators came to a stop in the middle of the 1970s closing an industry that had lasted for 120 years.

The calculating engines of Charles Babbage were the first automatic mechanical calculators in the world. Babbage started work on his analytical engine in 1834, "in less than two years he had sketched out many of the salient features of the modern computer. A crucial step was the adoption of a punched card system derived from the Jacquard loom" which made it the first programmable calculator. Howard Aiken mentioned Babbage extensively when he convinced IBM to build the Harvard Mark I in 1937 ; when the machine was finished some hailed it as "Babbage's dream come true". Babbage never built his steam powered mechanical calculators but in 1855 the swede Georg Scheutz became the first of a handful of designers to succeed at building a smaller and simpler model of his difference engine for the purpose of printing mathematical tables.