We tend to think of calculators as devices house in dull plastic boxes, but these calculators show them for the range of mechanical wonders that they are, from gleaming dials to monkey-shaped viewers to pens from some retrofuturistic world.


The Pascaline or Pascal's Calculator, by Blaise Pascal. It could add, subtract, multiply and divide two numbers (1642)


(via David Monniaux)

This machine, built by Johann Helfrich Müller around 1784


(via Dark Roasted Blend and Wikimedia Commons)

A mechanical calculator designed by Joseph Edmonson, patented in 1883




(via Museum-Digital)

Mercedes-Gauss, around 1905


(via Boelters and Heinz Nixdorf Forum)

The Adall Calculator, a 7.7 in (195 mm) diameter hundred-tooth disc, manufactured in Birmingham, England during the 1910s and 1920s



(via John Wolff and Rechnerlexikon)

An adding machine for blood cells, patented in 1922, manufactured in Chicago, Illinois


(via Mechanicalculator)

Consul, the Educated Monkey, originally produced in the early 1920s in Dayton, Ohio. It is a remake from the German DBS, produced around 2005.


(via Mechanicalculator)

The Baby Calculator, marketed between the 1920s and 1960s


(via Mechanicalculator)

The Water Integrator, that could solve (partial) differential equations, built by Vladimir Lukyanov, 1936


The water levels in the chambers represented stored numbers, and the rate of flow between them represented the mathematical operations.

(via Gizmodo)

The hand-cranked calculator Curta, invented by Curt Herzstark in 1948. Type II was introduced in 1954 and produced until 1972.


(via Werner Kratz)

The first calculator in a ball-point pen: Calcu-Pen, made in Japan, debuted in 1975. It had four-way switches and a 8-digit red LED display.



(via The Digital Watch and Bangkok Junk Man)