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Calculating machine

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A calculating machine is a machine designed to come up with calculations (i.e. computations); the most famous is probably the Victorian British scientist Charles Babbage's Difference Engine (No. 2), designed in the 1840s but never completed in the inventor's lifetime*.

Calculating machines shouldn't be confused with adding machines, which are for solving sums.

(* A working Difference Engine based on Babbage's original specifications, using only materials available during the mid-19th century, was built at the London Science Museum in the late 1990s.)

See also

Patents