Mechanical calculators Mechanical calculators An abacus is a calculation tool, often constructed as a wooden frame with beads sliding on wires. It was in use centuries before the adoption of the written Hindu-Arabic numeral system and is still widely used by merchants and clerks in China and elsewhere. ...more on Wikipedia about "Abacus"
The Addiator was a mechanical add/subtract calculator, made by Addiator Gesellschaft, Berlin. A sturdy design, variants of it were sold from August, 1920 until 1982. It was composed of sheet-metal sliders inside a metal envelope, manipulated by a stylus, with an innovative carry mechanism, doing subtract ten, carry one with a simple stylus movement. ...more on Wikipedia about "Addiator"
An adding machine is a type of calculator, usually specialized for bookkeeping calculations. ...more on Wikipedia about "Adding machine"
The analytical engine, an important step in the history of computers, is the design of a mechanical modern general-purpose computer by the British professor of mathematics Charles Babbage. It was first described in 1837, but Babbage continued to work on the design until his death in 1871. Because of financial, political, and legal issues, the engine was never actually built. General-purpose computers that were logically comparable to the analytical engine did not come into existence until about 100 years later. ...more on Wikipedia about "Analytical engine"
The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient artifact believed to be an early clockwork mechanism. It was discovered in a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, and has been dated to about 87 BC. ...more on Wikipedia about "Antikythera mechanism"
A calculating machine is a machine designed to come up with calculations (i.e. computations); the most famous is probably the Victorian British scientist Charles Babbage's Difference Engine (No. 2), designed in the 1840s but never completed in the inventor's lifetime*. ...more on Wikipedia about "Calculating machine"
There are two different understandings of Leibniz's Calculus Ratiocinator in the history of ideas. ...more on Wikipedia about "Calculus ratiocinator"
Charles Babbage ( December 26 1791 – October 18 1871) was an English mathematician, analytical philosopher, mechanical engineer and (proto-) computer scientist who originated the idea of a programmable computer. Parts of his uncompleted mechanisms are on display in the London Science Museum. In 1991, working from Babbage's original plans, a difference engine was completed, and functioned perfectly. It was built to tolerances achievable in the 19th century, indicating that Babbage's machine would have worked. Nine years later, the Science Museum completed the printer Babbage had designed for the difference engine; it featured astonishing complexity for a 19th-century device. ...more on Wikipedia about "Charles Babbage"
A Comptometer is a type of mechanical (or electro-mechanical) adding machine. The comptometer was the first adding device to be driven solely by the action of pressing keys, which are arranged in an array of vertical and horizontal columns. ...more on Wikipedia about "Comptometer"
Curt Herzstark was born in 1902 in Vienna, and died October 27, 1988 in Nendeln, Liechtenstein. During World War II, Curt Herzstark's plans for a mechanical pocket calculator (the Curta) literally saved his life. ...more on Wikipedia about "Curt Herzstark"
The Curta was a small, hand-cranked mechanical calculator introduced in 1948. ...more on Wikipedia about "Curta calculator"
A difference engine is a historical, mechanical special-purpose computer designed to tabulate polynomial functions. Since logarithmic and trigonometric functions can be approximated by polynomials, such a machine is more general than it appears at first. ...more on Wikipedia about "Difference engine"
The E6B is a form of circular slide rule used in aviation. They are mostly used in flight training, but many professional and even airline pilots will still carry and use their E6Bs. E6Bs are used during flight planning (on the ground before takeoff) to aid in calculating fuel burn, wind correction, time en route, and other items. In the air, the E6B can be used to calculate ground speed as well. The back is designed for wind correction calculations, i.e., determining how much the wind is affecting your speed and course. ...more on Wikipedia about "E6B"
The Mercedes-Euklid is a German-invented calculator from the early twentieth century. It was built in Thuringia, Germany in 1905. The first manual mechanical models utilized a proportional-lever design invented by Christel Hamann in 1903. ...more on Wikipedia about "Mercedes (calculator)" Tell your opinion about http://www.shortopedia.com
Napier's bones are an abacus invented by John Napier for calculation of products and quotients of numbers. Also called Rabdology (from Greek ραβδoς [rabdos], rod and λóγoς [logos], word). Napier published his invention of the rods in a work printed in Edinburgh, Scotland, at the end of 1617 entitled Rabdologiæ. Using the multiplication tables embedded in the rods, multiplication can be reduced to addition operations and division to subtractions. More advanced use of the rods can even extract square roots. Note that Napier's bones are not the same as logarithms, with which Napier's name is also associated. ...more on Wikipedia about "Napier's bones"
Blaise Pascal invented the second mechanical calculator, called alternatively the Pascaline or the Arithmetique, in 1645, the first being that of Wilhelm Schickard in 1623. ...more on Wikipedia about "Pascal's calculator"
Pinwheel calculators were invented independently by Frank S. Baldwin in the USA (1872) and Wilgott Theophil Odhner in Russia (1874). ...more on Wikipedia about "Pinwheel calculator"
The slide rule, or "slipstick," is an analog computer, usually consisting of three interlocking calibrated strips and a sliding window, called the cursor. It was commonly used until the 1970s, when the electronic calculator made it largely obsolete. Despite their similar appearance, a slide rule serves a different purpose than a standard ruler: a ruler measures physical distances and aids in drawing straight lines, while a slide rule performs mathematical calculations. ...more on Wikipedia about "Slide rule"
Leibniz developed Blaise Pascal's ideas and, in 1671, introduced the Step Reckoner (aka the Stepped Reckoner), a device that, as well as performing additions and subtractions, could multiply, divide, and evaluate square roots by a series of stepped additions. Leibniz also strongly advocated the use of the binary number system, which is fundamental to the operation of modern computers. Pascal's and Leibniz's devices were the forebears of today's desktop computers, and derivations of these machines continued to be produced until their electronic equivalents finally became readily available and affordable in the early 1970s. ...more on Wikipedia about "Stepped Reckoner"
The tabulating machine was a machine designed to assist in tabulations. Invented by Herman Hollerith, the machine was developed to help process data for the 1890 U.S. Census. ...more on Wikipedia about "Tabulating machine"
:Disambiguation: Another Thomas Fowler was a Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford (1899–1901). ...more on Wikipedia about "Thomas Fowler"
Theophil Wilgodt Odhner (in Cyrillic, Вильгодт Теофил Однер) ...more on Wikipedia about "Wilgott Theophil Odhner"
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia . Direct links to the original articles are in the text.
If you use exact copy or modified of this article you should preserve above paragraph and put also : It uses material from
the Shortopedia article about "Mechanical calculators".
| MAIN PAGE | MAIN INDEX | CONTACT US |