Stepped Reckoner

In the 1670s, a Germany Baron called Gottfried von Leibniz (sometimes von Leibnitz) took mechanical calculation a step beyond his predecessors. Leibniz, who entered university at fifteen years of age and received his bachelor s degree at seventeen, once said: It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation, which could be safely relegated to anyone else if machines were used.

Leibniz developed Blaise Pascal s ideas and, in 1671, introduced the Step Reckoner (aka the Stepped Reckoner), a device that, as well as performing additions and subtractions, could multiply, divide, and evaluate square roots by a series of stepped additions. Leibniz also strongly advocated the use of the binary number system, which is fundamental to the operation of modern computers. Pascal s and Leibniz s devices were the forebears of today s desktop computers, and derivations of these machines continued to be produced until their electronic equivalents finally became readily available and affordable in the early 1970s.

= External links =

*[http://www.maxmon.com/1670ad.htm Gottfried von Leibniz s Step Reckoner] *[http://www.xnumber.com/xnumber/pic_reckoner.htm Leibniz s Stepped Reckoner ]