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In 1642 Blaise Pascal who was a mathematician and a philosopher invented a so-called adding machine. As the 18-year-old son of a tax collector grew older, Pascal wanted to create a machine to assist his dad at his work. Pascal’s machine was originally called a numerical wheel calculator or the "pascaline." Pascal’s invention used a train of 8 moveable dials to add sum up to 8 numbers long. As one dial turned one full turn of numbers 1 thru10, the dial automatically turned the next dial.
While making number problems easier, the worst disadvantage about Pascal’s Adding Machine is that the machine could only do subtraction and addition problems. So Pascal’s invention of the adding machine was not widely used. However, the importance of the machine was not forgotten. Computers of today now use a computer programming language that has taken Pascal’s name. |
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