Home > Mechanical Calculators

A selection of Mechanical calculators:

The basic operating principles of mechanical calculators changed little from the end of the 19th century to their obsolescence in the 1970s, though there were many developments in the mechanisms and the materials used. This site shows representative examples of the different types.

Models made before the end of the 19th century are very rare and are usually only to be seen in museums and books. These include the Pascaline invented by Blaise Pascal, and the Stepped Reckoner invented by Leibniz, both in the 17th century, and Charles Xavier Thomas's Arithmometer in the 19th century.

The mechanical calculators featured here are typical machines which were ousted by the cheap electronic calculators which were gradually developed during the 1960s and early 1970s.

For information about the mechanisms of mechanical calculators see the Calculator Technology section.

For photographs of other mechanical calculators see the Mechanical Calculator Photo Library.
 

Click on an image below for larger pictures and technical details -

This is only a small sample of mechanical calculators. There were many more models from many manufacturers.

For more featured non-decimal machines see the Non-decimal Calculators section.

For featured British mechanical calculators see the British Calculators section.

Mechanical calculating machines date from the early 1600s - see the Calculator Time-line Section. Many of the early ones are very rare and are only to be seen in books and museums.

Due to the high cost of the early electronic calculators, many mechanical calculators like the later ones shown here were produced into the early 1970s. They were ousted when cheap LSI (Large-Scale Integration) electronics became available - see the electronic calculator sections.

For photographs of other mechanical calculators see the Mechanical Calculator Photo Library.

Vintage Calculators

© Text & photographs copyright Nigel Tout   2000-2012 except where noted otherwise.