“It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour of calculation which could safely be relegated to anyone else if machines were used”*…
The once ubiquitous mechanical calculator were engineering marvels… and as Kevin Twomey‘s photos also demonstrate, things of beauty…
More stunning photos of calculators (and typewriters and more) on Twomey’s site.
* Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, describing, in 1685, the value to astronomers of the hand-cranked calculating machine he had invented in 1673
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As we sum it up, we might send snappy birthday greetings to Nicéphore Niépce; he was born on this date in 1765. An inventor, he was a pioneer of photography…
The very first photograph was taken in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, who aimed a camera obscura, which held a polished pewter plate coated with bitumen of Judea (an asphalt derivative of petroleum), out the window of the upper-story workroom at his Saint-Loup-de-Varennes country house, Le Gras. After a day-long exposure, the plate was removed and the latent image of the view from the window was rendered visible by washing it with a mixture of oil of lavender and white petroleum, which dissolved away the parts of the bitumen which had not been hardened by light. The result was this permanent direct positive picture– a one-of-a-kind photograph on pewter:
(For more on Niépce and the story of his pioneering accomplishment [and a larger version of this inagural image], visit the source of this photo, the site of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas.)
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