Maurel and Jayet
In 1841 in Paris the young French student Timoléon-Louis Maurel (1819-1879) (later a good French clock-maker and inventor) devised and in the next 1842 obtained a patent for 15 years (see patent No. FR14529 from 18 November 1842) for his first calculating machine for multiplication and division, which certainly can..Read More
Jean-Baptiste Schwilgue
In 1844 the French engineer Jean-Baptiste Schwilgué from Strasbourg, together with his son Charles-Maximilien, patented a key-driven calculating machine, which seems to be the third key-driven machine in the world, after these of James White and Luigi Torchi, but was certainly the first popular keyboard calculator. Similar machines will be..Read More
Jehu Hatfield
On 6 May 1844, a certain Jehu Hatfield of Glens Falls, New York, took out a US patent №3574 for a machine for computing interest, measuring lumber, and for other purposes. It is unknown how many devices were produced, but at least one managed to survive to our time (see..Read More
Izrael Staffel
Around 1835 the young Warsaw watchmaker and inventor Izrael Abraham Staffel (1814-1885) commenced building in his workshop at Marszałkowska str. 125 an advanced first calculating machine, spending his meager funds. It took him ten years to finish the device, which was demonstrated to the public as late as 1845. taffel..Read More
Policarpo de Balzola
In the middle of the 1840s the Basque mathematician, surveyor, and inventor Policarpo de Balzola (1813-1879), from Irún (Guipúzcoa), Spain, invented his Arithmetical Machine, called Teclado Aritmético (Arithmetic Keyboard)—a keyboard-driven calculating machine that had the appearance of a piano (some ten years before the similar Piano machine of Thomas de..Read More
Heinrich Kummer
Several people experimented with versions of simple mechanical calculators, that included strips of metal with numbers marked on them mounted in a frame, where a stylus was used to slide these strips up and down. Let’s mention only Claude Perrault, who invented the first form of this class of devices..Read More
Jan Józef Baranowski
The Polish economist, financier, linguist, engineer and inventor Jan Józef Baranowski was the author of many technical inventions, 17 of which have been patented in France. Interestingly, at least five of them are for calculating devices: 1. Machine for obtaining the products of numbers without multiplying (Brevet №4587 from 1846..Read More