International Calculator Day

Since ancient times, people have used counting boards, abaci and other varieties of them to simplify arithmetic calculations, and since the 1620s, slide rules At the same time, Schickard's counting clock was invented - a device for addition and subtraction In 1873, Frank Stephen Baldwin designed a desktop mechanical machine to perform the four basic operations of mathematics The prototype of the “pinwheel calculator” created by the American inventor is Leonardo da Vinci’s adding machine, whose drawings date back to 1500 Counting devices appeared long before the start of the late Middle Ages In 1901, the Antikythera Mechanism was found at the bottom of the Ionian Sea During Antiquity, this device, consisting of geared bronze wheels, was used to determine the dates of astronomical events, the beginning of the Olympic Games and other holidays, and to calculate the movements of planets and stars Scientific and technological revolution of the mid-twentieth century contributed to the creation of electronic computing devices One of them was the calculator (translated from Latin as “counter”), in whose honor a holiday was established - International Calculator Day, celebrated on November 3 Not all modern inventions should be attributed to scientific and technological revolution Thus, specialists from IBM, a leader in the field of computer technology, assembled a 13-bit machine for adding numbers based on the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, found in 1967 The mechanical device, to the surprise of the engineers, turned out to be functional Like Schiccard's counting clock and Blaise Pascal's adding machine The French mathematician began assembling its first version at the age of 19 - in 1641 After modifying and creating more than 50 versions of the machine, B Pascal eventually received a device that suited him, which he named in his honor "Pascalina" was improved at the end of the 17th century Gottfried Leibniz The great mathematician and philosopher argued: “It is beneath the dignity of high-born people to waste their time on calculations when any peasant could do the job just as accurately with the help of a machine” He introduced a movable carriage into the design, which significantly increased the speed of the operation of multiplying numbers, and a walking cylinder, called a Leibniz wheel It was used in all adding machines for two centuries Up until the 1970s, the walking cylinder was part of the Curta calculator The first automatic adding machine, which operated using an external energy source, was designed by a mathematician and mechanic from the Russian Empire PL Chebyshev Invented by him in the 1850s the device operated by using the force of a falling weight The automatic numismator from the designer Wilgodt Odner, the adding machines of the watchmaker Timoleon Morel and the engineer Louis Jayet, the French entrepreneur Thomas de Colmar, who impressed Jules Verne himself with his device, left their mark on the history of the creation of computers Electric drives have been used in computing since the early 1930s In Germany at this time the Mercedes-Euclid adding machine was manufactured and put into mass production, in the USSR 20 years later - the VK-1 calculating machine, and in 1961 - the Felix model The Mercedes concern in this field constantly competed with another German company - Rheinmetall SAR The first devices were quite bulky and heavy Thus, the Rheinmetall SAL 2c device weighed 23 kg, the American-made Friden SRW adding machine weighed 19 kg In the 1970s, Japanese companies Sharp and Canon began producing pocket calculators that fit in the hand Today, these devices are used both to perform simple arithmetic operations and complex mathematical calculations Calculators are built into almost all modern gadgets, helping users quickly multiply and add multi-digit numbers This fact significantly forgives people's lives International Calculator Day calls for paying tribute to one of the most significant inventions of mankind