calculating machine
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of calculating machine
First recorded in 1700–10
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
One of Wall Street’s most foundational modern beliefs is that the stock market is a cold, calculating machine that assigns values to individual securities with a high degree of precision.
From MarketWatch • Jun. 25, 2026
Subsequently striking up a friendship with Charles Babbage, an inventor and mechanical engineer, Lovelace would become fascinated with his plans to build a complicated calculating machine.
From BBC • Mar. 17, 2026
Christie's said Wednesday it was suspending the Paris auction of one of just a handful of examples of the world's first calculating machine, developed by French mathematician and inventor Blaise Pascal in 1642.
From Barron's • Nov. 19, 2025
One of the central researchers in the early years of Antikythera research was German philologist Albert Rehm, the first person to understand the mechanism as a calculating machine.
From Scientific American • Dec. 14, 2021
In Europe, another innovator, Charles Babbage, born the son of a banker in 1791, was developing an early calculating machine at the time that Morse was refining and evangelizing the telegraph.
From "A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age" by Matt Richtel
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
