Pascal's Calculator - Fields of Application

Fields of Application

Pascalines came in both decimal and non-decimal varieties, both of which exist in museums today. They were designed to be used by scientists, accountants and surveyors. The simplest Pascaline had five dials ; later production variants had up to ten dials.

The contemporary French currency system used livres, sols and deniers with 20 sols to a livre and 12 deniers to a sol. Length was measured in toises, pieds, pouces and lignes with 6 pieds to a toise, 12 pouces to a pied and 12 lignes to a pouce. Therefore the pascaline needed wheels in base 6, 10, 12 and 20. Non decimal wheels were always located before the decimal part.

In an accounting machine (..10,10,20,12), the decimal part counted the number of livres (20 sols), sols (12 deniers) and deniers. In a surveyor's machine (..10,10,6,12,12), the decimal part counted the number of toises (6 pieds), pieds (12 pouces), pouces (12 lignes) and lignes. Scientific machines just had decimal wheels.

Various Configurations
Machine Type All the other wheels 4th wheel 3rd wheel 2nd wheel 1st wheel
Decimal /
Scientific
base 10
Ten thousands...
base 10
Thousands
base 10
Hundreds
base 10
Tens
base 10
Units
Accounting base 10
Hundreds...
base 10
Tens
base 10
Livres
base 20
Sols
base 12
Deniers
Surveying base 10
Tens ...
base 10
Toises
base 6
Pieds
base 12
Pouces
base 12
Lignes
The decimal part of each machine is highlighted in yellow


The metric system was adopted in France on December 10, 1799 by which time Pascal's basic design had inspired other craftsmen, although with a similar lack of commercial success.

Read more about this topic:  Pascal's Calculator

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