of each figure to the other was performed by the hand; when it was required to add more than two numbers, the additions were performed in the same manner successively; the second was added to the first, the third to their sum, and so on.
Subtraction was reduced to addition by the method of arithmetical complements; multiplication was performed by a succession of additions; and division by a succession of subtractions. In all cases, however, the operations were executed from wheel to wheel by the hand.[1]
This mechanism, which was invented about the year 1650, does not appear ever to have been brought into any practical use; and seems to have speedily found its appropriate place in a museum of curiosities. It was capable of performing only particular arithmetical operations, and these subject to all the chances of error in manipulation; attended also with little more expedition (if so much), as would be attained by the pen of an expert computer.
This attempt of Pascal was followed by various others, with very little improvement, and with no additional success. Polenus, a learned and ingenious Italian, invented a machine by which multiplication was performed, but which does not appear to have afforded any material facilities, nor any more security against error than the common process of the pen. A similar attempt was made by Sir Samuel Moreland, who is described as having transferred to wheel-work the figures of Napier's bones, and as having made some additions to the machine of Pascal.[2]
Grillet, a French mechanician, made a like attempt with as little success. Another contrivance for mechanical calculation was made by Saunderson. Mechanical contrivances for performing particular arithmetical processes were also made about a century ago by Delepréne and Boitissendeau; but they were merely modifications of Pascal's, without varying or extending its objects. But one of the most remarkable attempts of this kind which has been made since that of Pascal, was a machine invented by Leibnitz, of which we are not aware that any detailed or intelligible description was ever published. Leibnitz described its mode of operation, and its results, in the Berlin Miscellany,[3] but he appears to have declined any description of
- ↑ See a description of this machine by Diderot, in the Encyc. Method.; also in the works of Pascal, tom, iv., p. 7; Paris, 1819.
- ↑ Equidem Morelandus in Anglia, tubæ stentoriæ author, Rhabdologiam ex baculis in cylindrulos transtulit, et additiones auxiliares peragit in adjuncta machina additionum Pascaliana.
- ↑ Tom. i., p. 317.
