Last week the BBC reported that one of Blaise Pascal’s ‘Pascaline’ calculating machines dating from the 1640s had been withdrawn from sale by Christie’s auction house after a Paris court provisionally blocked the historic item from being exported. It has been valued at between €2 millon and €3 million (£1.7 to £2.6 million), being one of only 9 of the 50 or so original machines known to have been made by Pascal to have survived and the only one still in private hands.
Having written about Pascal’s calculating machines in some detail in Chapter 1 of The Story of the Computer and knowing how important they were to the development of mechanical calculators, I was fascinated to read this article. However, after checking out the accompanying press release on the Christie’s web site, my fascination turned to dismay, as it contains several factual errors, some of which were also picked up in the BBC article.
Christie’s describe the Pascaline as “the first attempt in history to substitute the human mind with a machine“, ignoring the earlier efforts of Wilhelm Schickard who is known to have invented his ‘Calculating Clock’ calculating machine in 1623, the same year that Pascal was born. The press release also states that the Pascaline represents “… the first time in history mental arithmetic had been mechanized” which is again incorrect. Irrespective of Schickard’s work, it could even be argued that Napier’s Bones, invented by John Napier in 1617, were the earliest attempt to mechanise mental arithmetic.
Of course, auction houses are sales organisations and a little hyperbole might be expected in their efforts to obtain the best price for their clients and themselves. But they also have a reputation to uphold, particularly the old established houses such as Christie’s, and it does them no good to be so blatant in their disregard for historical facts.
The Story of the Computer 