The First Mechanical Calculator Was Built in the 1600s
Blaise Pascal created a brass device with gears and dials that could add and subtract numbers up to eight digits. The machine used a series of rotating wheels that carried over tens automatically, much like an old-fashioned odometer.
💡 Fun detail:
Pascal built twenty of these calculators, and several still survive in museums today as working antiques.
Source: Smithsonian Institution