Topic:
Summary Composer:Anna Kwan
Summary:
Pascal's father collected taxes. In 1642 Pascal created the Pascaline to help his father. The Pascaline was the first mechanical calculator that could both add and subtract. It used a series of gears. A one-tooth engaged a ten-tooth gear; while one gear rotated ten times, the other rotated once.
Pascal's father educated his son, but wanted to reserve teaching Blaise until he reached fifteen. Pascal's father thought that exciting a child intellectually would drain his energy. Blaise discovered the math books his father locked up and disobediently read them with much interest. Blaise contributed to the development of number theory, geometry, philosophy, and computers.
Bibliography:
Hoyle, Michelle A., 1995-1996 "The First Mechanical Calculator" http://calypso.cs.uregina.ca/Lecture/pascaline.html
JOC-EFR, October 1996 "Pascal" http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Pascal.html
Lewis, Andrew ,1-31-1996 "Blaise Pascal" http://www-scf.usc.edu/~ajlewis/Pascal.html
(author and date not given) "68 250 Computer Programming for Engineer Course Styllabus" http://gear.kku.ac.th/~watis/index.html