Most early calculating machines carried out multiplication as a form of repeated addition. To multiply, say, by thirteen, one set the carriage at its rightmost position, turned the operating crank ...

In 1867, Frederick A. P. Barnard, a mathematician and the president of Columbia University in New York, served as a judge at the Exposition universelle, a world’s fair held in Paris. There he saw a ...

A "memory system" capable of storing 64,000 digits and leading a computing machine through a complex mathematical problem of 4000 steps was shown at the unveiling of Harvard University's new Mark III ...

Frustrated by human error, mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage designed a machine to perform mathematical functions and automatically print the results. Library of Congress When today’s number ...

It’s no bigger than a drinking glass, and it fits easily in the palm of the hand. It resembles a pepper grinder—or perhaps a hand grenade. The diminutive “Curta” is a striking machine, a mechanical ...

THE first calculating machine was invented in 1642 by Blaise Pascal. Had it not been for the War, the tercentenary of this event, which has had such a profound influence on applied mathematics and ...

1954: IBM builds the first calculating machine to use solid-state transistors instead of vacuum tubes. IBM already had a business selling calculating machines, and it was humming along quite nicely.