Pascal's Arithmometer

Abstract

AT a well-attended meeting of the Newcomen Society held in the rooms of the Royal Society on February 16, Mr. R. Nilsson gave a paper entitled "The Pascal Arithmometer and Other Means to Solve Mathematical Problems". The audience included many distinguished foreigners. Premising that accuracy in calculation is one of the most important elements in scientific progress, Mr. Nilsson said that by a calculating machine is understood a great number of working parts conjoined in action by various mechanisms to obtain arithmetical or algebraic results. Describing in detail, with the use of slides, the arithmometer invented by Blaise Pascal (1623–62) when a youth of nineteen, the author said that Pascal's basic invention was the 'ten-carry-over' which is seen in the counters, meters, cash registers, etc., which are part and parcel of our daily life. Two years were occupied in making the first machine, and more than fifty models were constructed before the machine was in working order. Pascal showed it in 1647 to Descartes and in 1649 to Chancellor Séguier, who helped him to obtain a patent. Mr. Nilsson mentioned the machines which succeeded Pascal's; Sir Samuel Morland's (1666), that of Leibniz (1672), and those of Grillet, Poleni and Charles Xavier Thomas, of Colmar, Alsace, who began the manufacture of calculating machines. In the ante-room was a representative exhibition of machines and documents. In proposing a vote of thanks to the Royal Society for its hospitality, the chairman, Eng. Captain E. C. Smith, said that there could be no more suitable place for the gathering. Pascal was associated with some of the French men of science whose meetings led to the founding of the French Academy of Sciences, and his death coincided with the grant of the Act of Incorporation to the Royal Society.