Wikinventia — Atlas of discoveries and inventions · Exploration Age

Stepped Reckoner — Gottfried Leibniz

~1673 AD · Transmission: Global
TechnologyInventionGermanic

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Leipzig, 1646 – Hannover, 1716) designs the Stepped Reckoner (Staffelwalze) and presents a prototype to the Royal Society of London in 1673. Its central mechanism is the Leibniz wheel: a cylinder with teeth of increasing length that allows mechanical multiplication and division, not just addition and subtraction. It is the first calculator capable of performing all four arithmetic operations through a single mechanism. The Leibniz wheel becomes a standard component of mechanical calculators for two centuries: it is present in Thomas de Colmar's arithmometer (1820), in Brunsviga machines, and in the Millionär (1893). A surviving Stepped Reckoner is preserved at the Leibniz-Bibliothek in Hannover.

InstitutionCourt of Hannover / Academy of Sciences of Paris
Historical regionDuchy of Hannover (present-day Germany)
Primary sourceLeibniz, G.W. — "Machina Arithmetica in qua non Additio tantum..." (manuscript 1685; published in Miscellanea Berolinensia, 1710)
Secondary sourceMacTutor — Leibniz (St Andrews); Marguin, J. — Histoire des instruments et machines à calculer (Hermann, 1994)
Original languageLatin / German
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