Pascaline



The Pascaline (shown above) is a primitive calculation device that is limited to addition and subtraction arithmetic, but is able to handle numbers up to 999,999.999. It was created by Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), a French mathematician and philosopher. The pascaline is believed to be developed sometime between 1642 and 1644. The device was constructed for Pascal's father, who was a tax collector and used it to help him in calculating taxes. The new device used a series of wheels that were turned by hand. The wheels had spokes on it to enable each number to be turned to the display and lock in so as to stay in the display. Each wheel had a numbers from one to nine. The pascaline could therefore input numbers up to 999,999.999.

//__Interactive Pascaline__//: [|http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~greg/calculators/pascal/Pascaline.wrl] = = =Sources=
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 * [|http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~greg/calculators/pascal/Pascaline.wrl]
 * [|http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~greg/calculators/pascal/About_Pascaline.htm]