Empire of the Sum

The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator

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Keith Houston: Empire of the Sum (2023, Norton & Company, Incorporated, W. W.)

English language

Published Aug. 23, 2023 by Norton & Company, Incorporated, W. W..

ISBN:
978-0-393-88215-5
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(1 review)

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A lovely book on the history of the pocket calculator.

A fascinating book on the history of counting and the rise (and fall) of the pocket calculator. The author starts with a history of humans counting and remembering counted values using various parts of their body. This leads to various ways, like notches on sticks or imprints on materials, as a way to record values. The need to quickly add, subtract and record values leads to arithmetic aids like the abacus and other simple mechanical aids.

The need to quickly perform multiplications (and other operations like division, square roots, etc.) would lead to mathematical innovations. One of them would involve the creation of logarithms, which convert multiplications (and the other operations) into 'simple' additions and subtractions. Various tables would be created before, once again, machines would be created as aids, like the slide rule. Other calculating machines would become more sophisticated, finally culminating in the mechanical wonder, the Curta, a …