The first calculating machines multiplied by repeated addition. To multiple by tens, hundreds, or larger units, one shifted the carriage. From the 1870s, a few inventors proposed machines that could ...

Christie's said Wednesday it was suspending the Paris auction of one of just a handful of examples of the world's first calculating machine, developed by French mathematician and inventor Blaise ...

Anyone who is baffled by mathematics beyond the multiplication tables can imagine with awe the Brobdingnagian mental efforts involved in inventing a clerkproof, 5,500-part machine that adds, subtracts ...