For more than 300 years Blaise
Pascal was credited with inventing the mechanical calculator. But in
1957 a German historian proved that Wilhelm Schickard had beaten Pascal
to it by 18 years, with his invention of a so-called "calculator clock"
in 1624.
In the 17th century John Napier (Scotland) had paved the way for the invention of mechanical calculating machines with his proposal that multiplication and division could be calculated as a series of additions and subtractions. Then, for more that three centuries, historians believed that Blaise Pascal (France) had invented the calculator in 1642, but this was disproved in the mid-20th century when historian Franz Hammer (Germany) discovered papers proving that in 1624, fully 18 years before Pascal, Wilhelm Schickard (Germany) had inventer something called a "calculator clock".
Schickard's machine not only predated Pascal's, it was also far more sophisticated and was capable of performing all four arithmetic operation of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Having discovered Schickard's papers in 1935, Hammer published them in 1957 and Schickard was finally acknowledged as the inventor of the mechanical calculator.
Some historians cite the Sinclair Executive, invented in 1972 by Clive Sinclair (England), as the first pocket calculator, but that depends on the size of one's pocket. The Sinclair Executive was 9.5.. thick and 140mm long and used LED's (light-emitting diodes) to display its results, while the Pocketronic, which had a terminal paper print-out for results, was large enough to stretch the definition as well as the fabric of a pocket.
Source - The Book Of Inventions by Ian Harrison
In the 17th century John Napier (Scotland) had paved the way for the invention of mechanical calculating machines with his proposal that multiplication and division could be calculated as a series of additions and subtractions. Then, for more that three centuries, historians believed that Blaise Pascal (France) had invented the calculator in 1642, but this was disproved in the mid-20th century when historian Franz Hammer (Germany) discovered papers proving that in 1624, fully 18 years before Pascal, Wilhelm Schickard (Germany) had inventer something called a "calculator clock".
Schickard's machine not only predated Pascal's, it was also far more sophisticated and was capable of performing all four arithmetic operation of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Having discovered Schickard's papers in 1935, Hammer published them in 1957 and Schickard was finally acknowledged as the inventor of the mechanical calculator.
The
first commercially successful calculator was invented in 1820 by
Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar (France), but the evolution of
calculators as we know them came when Jack Kilby (USA), inventor of the
microchip, began developing miniature electronic calculators as a means
of exploiting the microchip. In 1967 Kilby, together with Jerry Merryman
and James van Tassel (both USA) of Texas Instruments (TI), produced the
first hand-held electronic calculator and three years later TI and
Canon Inc. (Japan) launched the first commercial electronic pocket
calculator, the Pocketronic.
Some historians cite the Sinclair Executive, invented in 1972 by Clive Sinclair (England), as the first pocket calculator, but that depends on the size of one's pocket. The Sinclair Executive was 9.5.. thick and 140mm long and used LED's (light-emitting diodes) to display its results, while the Pocketronic, which had a terminal paper print-out for results, was large enough to stretch the definition as well as the fabric of a pocket.
Source - The Book Of Inventions by Ian Harrison
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