The first counting machine known to man was an abacus. This simple machine was invented in China and consisted of several rows of beads set in a frame. The earliest calculating machines were invented in 1632 by W. Oughtred (1574-1660), and they were called slide rules.
There were two types of slide rules, namely the circular slide rule and the rectangular slide rule. The first calculating machine was a practical and workable machine that could be used to add and list numbers. This was invented by William Seward Burroughs (1857-1898), an American from Rochester, New York. He patented his machine in 1885, and filed a patent for an improved version of his invention with an added printer seven years later. The French mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) invented a calculating machine to lend a hand to his father, a tax collector, to do his work in a more efficient manner. A crude type of calculating machine was invented by the brilliant and multi-talented Italian Leonardo Da Vinci.
There were two types of slide rules, namely the circular slide rule and the rectangular slide rule. The first calculating machine was a practical and workable machine that could be used to add and list numbers. This was invented by William Seward Burroughs (1857-1898), an American from Rochester, New York. He patented his machine in 1885, and filed a patent for an improved version of his invention with an added printer seven years later. The French mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) invented a calculating machine to lend a hand to his father, a tax collector, to do his work in a more efficient manner. A crude type of calculating machine was invented by the brilliant and multi-talented Italian Leonardo Da Vinci.
