Giovanni Poleni

Giovanni Poleni (1683 to 1761) was a Venetian marquess, physicist, mathematician and antiquarian who held chairs of astronomy, physics and mathematics at the University of Padua. In computing history he is remembered for building, in 1709, a wooden calculating clock that his source describes as the first calculator to use a pinwheel design. He destroyed it on hearing that Anton Braun had received 10,000 guldens for dedicating a pinwheel machine of his own design to the emperor Charles VI, but he described the machine in his Miscellanea of 1709 and Jacob Leupold later described it in Theatrum Machinarum Generale. In 1729 he also built a tractional device that enabled logarithmic functions to be drawn. He worked as a hydraulic engineer for the Venetian Senate, examined the cupola of St. Peter's in Rome, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1710 and became a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1739.