Wilhelm Schickard
It is widely believed that the first mechanical calculating device was created by the French mathematician Blaise Pascal in 1642. However, that distinction actually belongs to Wilhelm Schickard, a university professor and Lutheran minister.
Schickard was born on April 22nd, 1592 in Herrenberg, Germany. Little is known about his early life. He attended the University of Tübingen, earning a B.A. in 1609 and M.A. in 1611. In 1613, he became a Lutheran minister, serving several towns around Tübingen. He served in this capacity until 1619, when he was appointed Professor of Hebrew at the University of Tübingen. He taught Biblical languages until 1631, when he became Professor of Astronomy.
In 1623, Schickard built a mechanical device which could perform mathematical operations. In a letter to Johannes Kepler, written on September 20, 1623, Schickard described his machine as follows:
What you have done by calculation I have just tried to do by way of mechanics. I have conceived a machine consisting of eleven complete and six incomplete sprocket wheels; it calculates instantaneously and automatically from given numbers, as it adds, subtracts, multiplies and divides. You would enjoy to see how the machine accumulates and transports spontaneously a ten or a hundred to the left and, vice-versa, how it does the opposite if it is subtracting ...
Unfortunately, the only two original copies of Schickard's machine were lost, one in a fire and one after his death from plague in 1635. However, in the 1950s, scholars who were collecting the works of Kepler found, tucked into a book, Schickard's original drawings of his device. This made it possible for Professor Bruno Baron von Freytag Loringhoff of the University of Tübingen to reconstruct Schickard's calculator.
