Schickhard(t), Wilhelm

SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology

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b. 22 April 1592 Herrenberg, Stuttgart, Germany

d. 24 October 1635 Tübingen, Germany

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German polymath who described, and apparently built, a calculating "clock", possibly the first mechanical adding-machine.

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At an early age Schickhard won a scholarship to the monastery school at Tübingen and then progressed to the university, where he obtained his BA and MA in theology in 1609 and 1611, respectively. He then specialized in oriental languages and eventually became Professor of Hebrew, Oriental Languages, Mathematics, Astronomy and Geography at Tübingen. Between 1613 and 1619 he was also deacon or pastor to a number of churches in the area. In 1617 he met Johannes Kepler, who, impressed by his ability, asked him to draw up tables of figures for his Harmonica Mundi (1619). As a result of this, Schickhard designed and constructed a mechanical adding-machine that he called a calculating clock. This he described in a letter of 20 September 1623 to Kepler, but a subsequent letter of 25 February 1624 reported its destruction by fire. After his death, probably from bubonic plague, his papers and the letter to Kepler were discovered in the regional library in Stuttgart in 1930 by Franz Hamme, who described them to the 1957 Mathematical Congress. As a result, a Dr Baron von Freytag Lovinghoff, who was present at that meeting, built a reconstruction of Schickard's machine in 1960.

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Further Reading

F.Hamme, 1958, "Nicht Pascal sondern der Tübingen Prof. Wilhelm Schickhard erfund die Rechenmaschin", Buromarkt 20:1,023 (describes the papers and letter to Kepler).

B.von F.Lovinghoff, 1964, "Die erste Rechenmaschin: Tübingen 1623", Humanismus und

Technik 9:45.

——1973, "Wilhelm Schickhard und seine Rechenmaschin von 1625", in M.Graef (ed.), 350 Jahre Rechenmaschin.

M.R.Williams, 1985, History of Computing Technology, London: Prentice-Hall.

See also: Pascal, Blaise

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