Stepped reckoner
Calculadora de Leibniz (rueda escalonada)
- Date
- 1673-1694 · confidence high
- Place
- Paris (presented in London) / Hanover, Germany
- Credited to
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- People
- 👤 Gottfried Leibniz1646–1716
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
A machine capable of all four arithmetical operations thanks to a stepped-drum cylinder (the Leibniz wheel). Leibniz also proposed the binary system (1679) for mechanical calculation.
The carrying mechanism never fully worked; two examples survive.
What it led to
- The standard mechanism of calculators until the 20th century
- Binary arithmetic as the theoretical basis of computing
- A vision of a calculable logic (calculus ratiocinator)
Built on
Made possible
- Arithmometer1820 (comercial 1851)
- Torres Quevedo's algebraic machines1893-1914
- Babbage's Difference Engine (concept)
- Binary computation