MANUAL COMPUTING DEVICES

PASCAL'S CALCULATOR
Blaise Pascal invented the mechanical calculator in 1642.[1][2] He conceived the idea while trying to help his father who had been assigned the task of reorganizing the tax revenues of the French province of Haute-Normandie ; first called Arithmetic Machine, Pascal's Calculator and later Pascaline, it could add and subtract directly and multiply and divide by repetition.

STEPPED RECKONER

The Step Reckoner (or Stepped Reckoner) was a digital mechanical calculator invented by German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz around 1672 and completed in 1694.[1] The name comes from the translation of the German term for its operating mechanism; staffelwalze meaning 'stepped drum'. It was the first calculator that could perform all four arithmetic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division..

DIFFERENCE ENGINE

A difference engine is an automatic, mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions. The name derives from the method of divided differences, a way to interpolate or tabulate functions by using a small set of polynomial coefficients. Both logarithmic and trigonometric functions, functions commonly used by both navigators and scientists, can be approximated by polynomials, so a difference engine can compute many useful sets of numbers.

MECHANICAL COMPUTING DEVICES

CALCULATOR

An electronic calculator is a small, portable, usually inexpensive electronic device used to perform the basic operations of arithmetic. Modern calculators are more portable than most computers, though most PDAs are comparable in size to handheld calculators.

COMPUTER

A computer is a general purpose device which can be programmed to carry out a finite set of arithmetic or logical operations. Since a sequence of operations can be readily changed, the computer can solve more than one kind of problem. The essential point of a computer is to implement an idea, the terms of which are satisfied by Alan Turing's Universal Turing machine.

TOTAL DISSOLVED SOLIDS

Total Dissolved Solids (often abbreviated TDS) is a measure of the combined content of all inorganic and organic substances contained in a liquid in: molecular, ionized or micro-granular (colloidal sol) suspended form. Generally the operational definition is that the solids must be small enough to survive filtration through a sieve the size of two micrometer. Total dissolved solids are normally discussed only for freshwater systems, as salinity comprises some of the ions constituting the definition of TDS.