Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal (1623 to 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher and Catholic writer whose place in computing rests on the mechanical calculator he began building in 1642, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. As a teenager he set out to ease the repeated tax calculations his father, a tax collector in Rouen, had to carry out, and the machine he built could add and subtract. His source credits him as one of the first two inventors of the mechanical calculator and calls the machines pioneering forerunners to four centuries of mechanical calculation, though the calculator was not a commercial success. Beyond the machine he worked on projective geometry and conic sections, corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability, and studied fluids, pressure and the vacuum. He also wrote the Provincial Letters and the Pensées.