Wilhelm Schickard (22 April 1592 – 24 October 1635) was a German professor of Hebrew and astronomy who became famous in the second part of the 20th century after Franz Hammer, a biographer (along with Max Caspar) of Johannes Kepler, claimed that the drawings of a calculating clock, predating the public release of Pascal's calculator by twenty years, had been discovered in two unknown letters written by Schickard to Johannes Kepler in 1623 and 1624.[1][2]
Hammer asserted that because these letters had been lost for three hundred years, Blaise Pascal had been called[3] and celebrated as[4] the inventor of the mechanical calculator in error during all this time.
After careful examination it was found that Schickard's drawings had been published at least once per century starting from 1718,[5] that his machine was not complete and required additional wheels and springs[6] and that it was designed around a single tooth carry mechanism that didn't work properly when used in calculating clocks.[7][8]
Schickard's machine was the first of several designs of direct entry calculating machines in the 17th century (including the designs of Blaise Pascal, Tito Burattini, Samuel Morland and René Grillet).[9] The Schickard machine was particularly notable for its integration of an ingenious system of rotated Napier's rods for multiplication with a first known design for an adding machine, operated by rotating knobs for input, and with a register of rotated numbers showing in windows for output. Taton has argued that Schickard's work had no impact on the development of mechanical calculators.[10] However, whilst there can be debate about what constitutes a "mechanical calculator" later devices, such as Moreland's multiplying and adding instruments when used together, Caspar Schott's Cistula, René Grillet's machine arithmétique, and Claude Perrault's rhabdologique at the end of the century, and later, the Bamberger Omega developed in the early 20th century, certainly followed the same path pioneered by Schickard with his ground breaking combination of a form of Napier's rods and adding machine designed to assist multiplication.[11]
Schickard has been called "the father of the computer age".[12]
^Jean Marguin p. 48 (1994)
^"A Brief History of Computing".
^"[...] but it was not until 1642 that Blaise Pascal gave us the first mechanical calculating machine in the sense that the term is used today." Howard Aiken, proposed automatic calculating machine, presented to IBM in 1937
^"Pascal's invention of the calculating machine, just three hundred years ago, was made while he was a youth of nineteen. He was spurred to it by seeing the burden of arithmetical labor involved in his father's official work as supervisor of taxes at Rouen. He conceived the idea of doing the work mechanically, and developed a design appropriate for this purpose ; showing herein the same combination of pure science and mechanical genius that characterized his whole life. But it was one thing to conceive and design the machine, and another to get it made and put into use. Here were needed those practical gifts that he displayed later in his inventions..." Magazine Nature, Prof. S. Chapman, Pascal tercentenary celebration, London, (1942)
^History of computers The calculating clock of Wilhelm Schickard. Retrieved January 31, 2012
^Michael Williams, p.122 (1997)
^Michael Williams, p.124,128 (1997)
^Single tooth carry mechanisms worked well in pedometers of the 16th century and were still used in mechanical odometers and gas meters during the 20th century.
^Please see Mechanical calculator#Calculating clocks
^René Taton, p. 81 (1969)
^see for example discussion of true multiplying machines in http://things-that-count.net
WilhelmSchickard (22 April 1592 – 24 October 1635) was a German professor of Hebrew and astronomy who became famous in the second part of the 20th century...
electronic calculator and the digital computer. Surviving notes from WilhelmSchickard in 1623 reveal that he designed and had built the earliest of the...
even before the development of sophisticated computing equipment. WilhelmSchickard designed and constructed the first working mechanical calculator in...
seen in American office settings by the year 2000. Blaise Pascal and WilhelmSchickard were the two original inventors of the mechanical calculator in 1642...
by inventors and scientists in making calculating tools. In 1623 WilhelmSchickard designed a calculating machine as a commission for Johannes Kepler...
I of Castile (d. 1504) 1518 – Antoine of Navarre (d. 1562) 1592 – WilhelmSchickard, German astronomer and mathematician (d. 1635) 1610 – Pope Alexander...
The Renaissance saw the invention of the mechanical calculator by WilhelmSchickard in 1623, and later by Blaise Pascal in 1642. A device that was at...
astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli, Riglon by German astronomer WilhelmSchickard, and Rigel Algeuze or Algibbar by English scholar Edmund Chilmead...
Russell & Norvig 2021, p. 8. McCorduck 2004, pp. 41–42. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm Freiherr von (1920). The Early Mathematical Manuscripts of Leibniz: Translated...
seeding by dry ice Bela Schick (1877–1967), Hungary – diphtheria test WilhelmSchickard (1592–1635), Germany – mechanical calculator Hugo Schiff (1834–1915)...
1623: Mechanical calculator by WilhelmSchickard Late 17th century: Calculus and Leibniz's notation by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1673–1676: Leibniz formula...
the first to document the use of gears for mechanical calculation. WilhelmSchickard, a German polymath, designed a calculating machine in 1623 which combined...
Francesco Maria Brancaccio, Catholic cardinal (d. 1675) April 22 – WilhelmSchickard, German inventor (d. 1635) April 24 Marcos Ramírez de Prado y Ovando...
Abitur in 1991. Ettrich studied for his MSc in Computer Science at the WilhelmSchickard Institute for Computer Science at the University of Tübingen. He currently...
September 16 – Metius, Dutch mathematician (born 1571) October 22 – WilhelmSchickard, German professor of Hebrew and Astronomy (born 1592) John Mason,...
century. Erotomania is first mentioned in a psychiatric treatise. WilhelmSchickard draws a calculating clock on a letter to Kepler. This will be the...
Johann Ulrich Steigleder, German composer (b. 1593) October 24 – WilhelmSchickard, German inventor (b. 1592) October 31 – Maria Amalia of Nassau-Dillenburg...
Francesco Maria Brancaccio, Catholic cardinal (d. 1675) April 22 – WilhelmSchickard, German inventor (d. 1635) April 24 Marcos Ramírez de Prado y Ovando...
of the Sun is published in Latin (as Civitas Solis) in Frankfurt. WilhelmSchickard devizes a Calculating Clock, an early mechanical calculator. Zildjian...
based on logarithms as developed by John Napier. 1623 German polymath WilhelmSchickard drew a device that he called a calculating clock on two letters that...
Johann Ulrich Steigleder, German composer (b. 1593) October 24 – WilhelmSchickard, German inventor (b. 1592) October 31 – Maria Amalia of Nassau-Dillenburg...
of the Sun is published in Latin (as Civitas Solis) in Frankfurt. WilhelmSchickard devizes a Calculating Clock, an early mechanical calculator. Zildjian...
language processing, mathematical linguistics Jonathan Schaeffer WilhelmSchickard – one of the first calculating machines Jürgen Schmidhuber – artificial...