René Grillet

René Grillet, also written René Grillet de Roven, was a French mechanic and watchmaker from Rouen who served as watchmaker to King Louis XIV and designed a mechanical calculating machine in the seventeenth century. In 1673 he published a small book, Curiositez mathematiques de l'invention du Sr Grillet horlogeur a Paris, announcing an arithmetical calculating machine, and in 1678 he described it in an article in the Journal des Scavans. By his own account he was inspired by Blaise Pascal's work and combined the Pascaline with Napier's bones so that one machine could add and also multiply. He displayed it at fairs in France and the Netherlands between 1673 and 1681 and tried, with unclear success, to build a business selling such machines. His birth and death years are not stated in the sources read.