Notched Sticks to Calculators: The History of Counting Machines
22nd November 2025
I find it difficult to talk about the history of the computer. The actual record is dreadfully short: almost nothing of consequence happened before the year 1935. We keep looking for a better story, but we inevitably end up grasping at straws.
Just look at what we’ve done so far. The “father of the computer” is no longer Konrad Zuse (Z1, 1938) or John Mauchly (ENIAC, 1943). Somehow, we pivoted to Charles Babbage — a 19th century polymath who never constructed such a device, and had no luck inspiring others to try. Not content with this injustice, we also turned “computing” into a meaningless word. On Wikipedia, the timeline of computer hardware includes mechanical clocks, dolls, weaving looms, and a miniature chariot from 910 BCE. It’s historical synthesis run amok.
To me, the calculator is a particularly regrettable casualty of this expansionist approach. Of course, the development of the calculator is intertwined with the history of the computer — but it deserves to be treated as a story of its own.