1623 - Technology

Technology

A new English patent law protects and encourages inventors.

German mathematician and astronomer Wilhelm Schickard, 31, writes to his friend Johannes Kepler September 23 describing his progress in inventing a Rechenmaschiene (computer) (see science [Oughtred's slide rule], 1622). A professor at the University of Tübingen in Württemberg, Schickard has built a mechanical device that employs six dented wheels geared through a "mutilated" wheel to add and subtract up to six-digit numbers; with every full turn of this wheel another wheel located to its right rotates 1/10 of a full turn, an overflow mechanism rings a bell, and a set of Napier's cylinders in the machine's upper half helps to perform multiplications, enabling the Rechenmaschiene to multiply as well as add, subtract, and divide. Schickard and his family will die in an epidemic of bubonic plague in 1635, his detailed notes will not be discovered until 1935, and their significance will not be recognized for another 20 years (see Pascal, 1642).