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.
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
“Get the girl,” the astronaut had said, refusing to fly unless Johnson, with her mastery of mathematics, had verified the computer’s work on her mechanical calculating machine.
From The Guardian • Feb. 24, 2020
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.
