It All Adds Up - The First Calculators

In 1642, a famous French scientist and philosopher, Blaise Pascal, invented an adding machine to help his father with tax collecting. It was a wooden box with 16 dials that allowed rapid addition and subtraction.

In 1961, the first electronic desktop calculator was produced by Bell Punch Company of Uxbridge, England. It was called the “Anita,” an acronym for “A New Inspiration to Arithmetic.” This calculator used vacuum tubes, weighed over 30 pounds, and cost $1,000.

From April 2006

Back to Archives