Calculating machine

17th century Blaise Pascal calculating machines

19th and early 20th centuries calculating machines, Musée des Arts et Métiers

A calculating machine is a machine designed to come up with calculations or, in other words, computations. One noted machine was the Victorian British scientist Charles Babbage's Difference Engine (No. 2), designed in the 1840s but never completed in the inventor's lifetime. A working example, based on Babbage's original specifications and using only materials available during the mid-19th century, was built at the London Science Museum in the late 1990s.

A "calculating machine" is different from an "adding machine"; the later which is used for solving sums.

See also

• George Brown (inventor)
• Calculator
• History of computing hardware

Patents

• U.S. patent 388,116 — Calculating machine — W. S. Burroughs