History of Computers - The Speeding Clock

This page was created by Andre Gras.

The Speeding Clock or Calculating Clock was one of the first calculating machines ever. It was invented by Wilhelm Schickard in 1623.

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Overview

This machine preceded the Pascaline and Gottfried Leibniz's Stepped Reckoner by about 20 years. It was called the "Calculating Clock" because it used gears and cogs used in clocks. ^[2] The Calculating Clock used a direct gear drive and rotating wheels to make calculations. As one wheel made a complete turn, the wheel to the left rotated one-tenth of a turn. Schickard reportedly had constructed one prototype of the machine and then tried constructing a Calculating Clock for the famous mathematician Johannes Kepler, but fire destroyed the machine destined for Kepler around 1624. The location of the original prototype is unknown.^[3]It could add and subtract up to six-digit numbers, and it would ring a bell whenever there was an overflow in its capacity. For more complex problem's Napier's Bones were set on it. It could also calculate astronomic tables. Not until 200 years later did the design come out for a programmable computer by Charles Babbage.^[4] The first actual working computer was invented 300 years later by Konrad Zuse, who created the Z3. For his invention, Schickard was dubbed the "Father of the Computer Age".^[5] ^[6] This machine was based off of the decimal system, but Gottfried Leibniz discovered the binary system, which turned out to be very important, thanks to Konrad Zuse. ^[7]

$pic_schickard.gif$ ^[8] Replica of Schikard's Calculating Clock

Significance

This machine, though not programmable, provided the design for a programmable computer and was significant because it was one of the first computing devices ever. This machine also started the Computer Age, and revolutionized Astronomy.