The People's Best Friend: The

Calculators' Brief History

The calculator has a long and fascinating history. From the timeless Abacus to
the modern smartphone app this device has been people's most trusted
friend.

By  Christopher McFadden
December 05, 2018

1,2

Forget dogs, people's best friend has always been, and will always be, the calculator.

This powerful yet diminutive device has undergone a few significant facelifts over the
millennia but their basic functions would be familiar in concept to our ancestors.
From the simple Abacus, more advanced mechanical forms would be developed until
they underwent several quantum leaps in power with the advent of the first electronics
and then the microchip.

Their final and most significant advancement came with their casting off their physical
shackles to become almost exclusively virtual on an incalculable number of computers
and smart devices.

The calculator's physical complexity reached its zenith in the 1990s but the rise of the
internet, home computers and ultimately smartphones, has already, mostly, made them
obsolescent.

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Present
Whilst some, like me, do prefer to use a physical, dedicated calculator for calculations,
many others never give them a second thought.
The HP-15C is one of the greatest calculators of all time. Source: eBay
But we at IE are determined to make sure you never look at that old school calculator the
same way ever again. By picking it up once more you are quite literally holding
thousands of years of human history in your hand - as you are about to find out.

Where it all began - The venerable Abacus

The history of the calculator, or what we know of it, began with the hand-operated
Abacus in Ancient Sumeria and Egypt in around 2000-2500 BC.

These are very simple devices compared to modern calculators consisting of sets of ten
beads on a series of rods held in place on a quadrilateral frame usually made of wood.

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The Abacus was the first purpose-built device for counting yet discovered with the
exception of the counting board.

Prior to this is likely humans used their fingers or piles of stones, seeds or beads (or
anything really). 

The principle is very simple - at least for addition. The topmost rod represents the number
of small units.

By moving them from one side to the other the user can quickly keep track of any unit
numbers between one and ten. 
Once ten is reached a single bead on the next rod can be slid across to represent a unit of
ten. The topmost beads can then be returned to the opposing side and small units can be
counted again.

Each lower rod represents ever larger powers-of-ten with the third representing hundreds,
the next thousands and so on. 

Chinese Abacus (Suanpan) vary in design and are used in a slightly different manner
western versions, but the principle is the same.

It is believed that the Abacus was introduced to the Chinese by Roman merchants in
around 190 AD.
Example of a Chinese Abacus. Source:  Pixabay
The Abacus would remain as the de facto counting device for over four and half
millennia.

It is still the counting device of choice throughout many parts of Asia (some devices even
combining the two). 

That was, at last in Europe, until 1617.

John Napier and his fancy bones

In 1617 a Scottish Mathematician, John Napier, published his seminal
book Rabdology (calculating with rods). This book described the workings of a device
that would come to be known as Napier's Bones.

The bones (rods) were very thin with each being inscribed with multiplication tables.
Users could make quick calculations by adjusting each rods' vertical alignment in order to
read off the multiplication total in the horizontal.

They were primarily developed as a calculation method to find the products and quotients
of numbers. The beauty of them was their simplicity.

After only a matter of a few hours of practice, anybody could quickly make fairly
complex multiplication and division calculations. An expert could even use them to
extract square roots for pretty large numbers, not bad for the 17th Century!

They enabled a user to break down multiplication into much simple addition operations
or division to simple subtractions.  

As impressive as this simple invention was it was not technically speaking a calculator as
the user still needed to make mental calculations in order to use them.

They did, however, offer a shortcut methodology to help speed multiplication and
divisional problems.

The slide rule was the next big advancement

Europe saw the next stage in the development of Mechanical calculators during the 17th
Century.

With the help of Napier and his algorithms,  Edmund Gunter, William Oughtred and
others, were able to make the next significant development in calculators - the slide rule.

The slide rule was an advancement to the abacus as it consisted of a sliding stick that

could perform rapid multiplications by using logarithmic scales.
Source: Pixabay
On the surface, slide rules look like pretty complex devices but that betrays the pure
utility of them.

They are, in effect, a sliding stick (or disk as above) that make use of logarithmic scales
to quickly solve multiplication and division problems. 

They would undergo a series of advancements that would enable them to be used to
perform advanced trigonometry, logarithms, exponentials, and square roots. 

As late as the 1980s the use of slide rules was part of many countries school curricula and
was considered a fundamental requirement for millions of school children to learn. 

This is quite interesting as other mechanical and electronic calculators were in existence
at this time.

However, often, these were not the most portable devices when compared to the slide
rules of the time that could easily fit into a breast pocket or button-down shirt. 

Slide rules were of fundamental importance to the NASA space program with them being
heavily relied upon during the Apollo program.

A Pickett model N600-ES was even taken along with the crew on the Apollo-13 moon
mission in 1970. 

Blaise Pascal and the rise of the true

mechanical calculator
In 1642 one Blaise Pascal created a device that could perform arithmetic operations with
just two numbers.

His machine comprised of geared wheels that could add and subtract two numbers
directly and also multiply and divide them by repetition.

The inspiration for Pascal's calculator, arithmetic machine or Pascaline, was his

frustration with the laborious nature of arithmetical calculations his father had to perform
as the supervisor of taxes in Rouen.
The key part of his machine was its carry mechanism that adds 1 to 9 on one dial.

When the dial is turned to reach 0 the next dial is able to carry the 1, so on so forth. His
innovation made each digit independent of the state of the others, which enabled multiple
carries to rapidly cascade from one digit to another regardless of the machine's capacity.

Between 1642 and 1645 he would create no less than 50 prototypes, finally presenting his
final piece to the public and dedicating it to the then chancellor of France, Pierre Seguier.

He would continue to improve his design over the next few decades and was eventually
presented with a Royal privilege (the equivalent of a patent) to allow him exclusive rights
to design and build mechanical calculators in France.

Today nine examples of his original machines exist with most displayed around museums
in around Europe.
Pascaline's carry mechanism. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

All other mechanical calculators following the Pascaline were either directly inspired by
it or shared the same influences that Pascal used for his device. 
Key examples included the 1673 Leibniz Wheels, devised by Gottfried Leibniz. Leibniz
attempted to improve on the Pascaline by adding automatic multiplication features to
Pascal's design.

Gottfried's design consisted of a cylinder with a set of teeth of incremental lengths.

These were coupled with a counting wheel and whilst not a compete calculator in and of
itself, it would become an integral component of future mechanical calculators. 

He did attempt to build his own complete calculation machine, called the "Stepped
Reckoner", a few decades later but it was never mass-produced. 

Leibniz's work was not in vain, however. In 1820, Thomas de Colmar built his
famous Arithmometer.

This incorporated Leibniz's wheels (step drum), or his own re-invention of it, and would
go on to become the first mechanical calculator strong and reliable enough to be used day
to day in places like offices. 
 Sour
ce: Ezrdr/Wikimedia Commons
It would become an instant commercial success and was manufactured between 1851 and
1915. It was also copied and built by many other companies around Europe.

The calculator was capable of adding and subtracting two numbers directly and could
perform long multiplications and divisions by using a movable accumulator.

The Arithmometer would mark a watershed in calculator history forcing, in its own way,
the beginning of the end for the large-scale reliance on human calculators.

It would also effectively launch the mechanical calculator industry around the world. 

Some were still built and used as late as the 1970s. 

The rise and fall of the Mechanical Calculator

age
Mechanical calculator innovation moved across the Atlantic to the USA after the success
of the Arithmometer with the development of various hand-cranked adding machines.

These included the highly successful Grant Mechanical Calculating Machine built in

1877 and the famous P100 Burroughs Adding Machine devised by William Seward
Burroughs in 1886.

The P100 became very successful indeed for Burroughs and his company and would be
the first of a line of office calculating machines.

This would make the Burroughs family very wealthy indeed and allowed his grandson,
William S. Burroughs, to enjoy a carefree lifestyle enabling him to pen several novels
including the drug-culture inspired novel "The Naked Lunch". 

A little later, in 1887, Dorr. E. Felt, got a U.S. patent for his Comptometer. This machine
took calculators into the push-button age and would inspire many imitations of it
throughout the next century. 

The inclusion of push-buttons would dramatically improve the efficiency of calculators

for addition and subtraction. This is because push button presses can add values to the
accumulator as soon as they are depressed. 

This means numbers can be entered simultaneously which can make devices like
the Comptometer faster to use than electronic calculators that require numbers to be
inputted individually in serial.
Source: Ezrdr/Wikimedia Commons
In the late 1940's Mechanical calculators became portable. The Curta Calculator was
compact, could fit in one hand, and could, rather clumsily fit into a pocket. 

In fact, it was the very first, last and only mechanical handheld pocket calculator ever
developed.

It was the brainchild of Curt Herzstark (an Austrian inventor) and is effectively a
descendant of Gottfried Leibniz's Stepped Reckoner and Charles Thomas' Arithmometer. 

During World War II, Herzstark completed his designs for the Curta, but as his father
was Jewish, he was sent to Buchenwald Concentration Camp.
However, his mechanical know-how saved his life as the Nazi’s treated him as an
“Intelligence-slave”.

It worked by accumulating values on cogs which are then themselves added or

complemented by a stepped drum mechanism.

The entire mechanism fit snuggly inside a small cylinder and was, to all intent and
purpose, a very beautiful piece of kit.

It was capable of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division all in the palm of your
hand. The Curta would enjoy phenomenal commercial success being the de
facto portable calculator for many decades.
Type II Curta. Source: Pixabay
Each one cost around between $125 and $175 dollars and today sell for anywhere
between $1000 and $2000 depending on the condition and model. 

Herzstark’s intricate design for the Curta was used all the way to the 1960s in rally cars
and cockpits where quick calculations had to be made.

The Curta and push-button mechanical calculators had reached their zenith in the 1960s,
but their dominance would soon be challenged.

The rise of the electronic calculator

The story of the electronic calculator has its roots in the late 1930s. As the world geared
up for large-scale warfare artillery, warship gun batteries, bomb sights, and other
weapons required means of calculating trigonometry quickly and reliably. 

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Solutions quickly appeared like the Sperry-Norden bombsight, U.S. Navy Torpedo Data
Computer, and the Kerrison Predictor AA fire control system.

These were all hybrid mechanical and electrical systems that used geared wheels and
rotating cylinders to produce electronic outputs that fed into weapon systems. 
More sophisticated systems came into creation later in the war with the need to break
enemy codes.

This ultimately led to the development of the famous Colossus 'computer' that was

dedicated to performing XOR Boolean algorithms rather than calculations per se.

Reconstr
uction Colossus at Bletchley Park Source: MaltaGC/Wikimedia Commons
At the end of the war the first general calculating computer, the ENIAC (Electronic
Numerical Integrator And Computer) was completed in 1946.
This was designed as a completely digital artillery firing table calculator and could also
be applied to solving many other numerical problems.

This included the basic four arithmetical functions. It was 1,000 times faster than any
existing electro-mechanical computer of the time and could as many as ten-digit decimal
numbers in its memory.

It was, however, enormous weighing an incredible 27 tonnes and required a lot of space.

But progress in all electronic calculators hit a choke point as they were limited by the size
of vacuum tubes - they would need to be miniaturized.