Calculating machine

A calculating machine is a machine designed to come up with calculations (i.e. computations); the most famous is probably the Victorian British scientist Charles Babbage's Difference Engine (No. 2), designed in the 1840s but never completed in the inventor's lifetime*.

Calculating machines shouldn't be confused with adding machines, which are for solving sums.

(* A working Difference Engine based on Babbage's original specifications, using only materials available during the mid-19th century, was built at the London Science Museum in the late 1990s. )

See also

• Calculator
• IBM CPC

Patents

• U.S. Patent 388116 — Calculating machine — W. S. Burroughs