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 ...

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 ...

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 ...