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A brief history of counting machines (2023)
A heterodox take on the prehistory, the golden years, and the future of general-purpose calculating aids.
We know that sophisticated trade-based economies go back at least 5,000 years — and that even in their early days, they required merchants to maintain accurate inventories, tally the proceeds, and keep track of debt. The device, developed in the early 17th century, exploited the properties of logarithms, essentially turning multiplication and division into the comparatively simpler problem of addition and subtraction — and then automating that last step with a simple sliding assembly. Further, a separate turn counter could be furnished to minimize mistakes; and a movable coupling between the registers could be used to permit rapid multiplication by powers of ten.
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