the Pascaline

The Pascaline is an early mechanical calculator invented by Blaise Pascal in 1642. It uses a series of interconnected gears and dials to perform basic addition and subtraction automatically. When you turn a crank, the gears move to show the result on wheels with numbers, allowing users to do calculations more efficiently than counting on fingers or mental math. It's one of the first devices to automate arithmetic, laying the groundwork for modern calculators. While simple by today’s standards, the Pascaline was a significant technological advancement in the history of computing.