Blaise Pascal

===Pascaline===
[[File:Pascaline-CnAM 823-1-IMG 1506-black.jpg|thumb|An early [[Pascaline]] on display at the [[Musée des Arts et Métiers]], Paris|alt=]]
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid (into which work the young Pascal had been recruited), Pascal, not yet 19, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called ''[[Pascal's calculator]]'' or the ''Pascaline''. Of the eight Pascalines known to have survived, four are held by the [[Musée des Arts et Métiers]] in Paris and one more by the [[Zwinger museum]] in [[Dresden]], Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators.<ref>A complete list of known Pascalines and also a review of contemporary replicas can be found at [http://metastudies.net/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Site.SurvivingPascalines Surviving Pascalines] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211105180308/http://metastudies.net/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Site.SurvivingPascalines |date=5 November 2021 }} and [http://metastudies.net/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Site.ReplicaPascalines Replica Pascalines] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211105181911/http://metastudies.net/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Site.ReplicaPascalines |date=5 November 2021 }} at http://things-that-count.net {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181215022135/http://things-that-count.net/ |date=15 December 2018 }}</ref>

Although these machines are pioneering forerunners to a further 400 years of development of mechanical methods of calculation, and in a sense to the later field of [[computer engineering]], the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Partly because it was still quite cumbersome to use in practice, but probably primarily because it was extraordinarily expensive, the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and a [[status symbol]], for the very rich both in France and elsewhere in Europe. Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade, and he refers to some 50 machines that were built to his design.<ref>[http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Machine_d%E2%80%99arithm%C3%A9tique (fr) La Machine d'arithmétique, Blaise Pascal] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110515015452/http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Machine_d%E2%80%99arithm%C3%A9tique |date=15 May 2011 }}, Wikisource</ref> He built 20 finished machines over the following 10 years.<ref>{{cite book|last=Mourlevat|first=Guy|title=Les machines arithmétiques de Blaise Pascal|publisher=La Française d'Edition et d'Imprimerie|year=1988|location=Clermont-Ferrand|page=12|language=fr}}</ref>