The first commercially successful calculating machine—the arithmometer—was patented in 1820 but not mass-produced for over three decades, likely because its inventor was focused on his insurance business.

Among the smallest mass-produced mechanical calculators in history, the Curta was designed by Austrian engineer Curt Herzstark while imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.

Unsatisfied with the designs provided by an Apple engineer, Steve Jobs designed the original Mac calculator in about 10 minutes.

Designed in 1937 by Harvard graduate student Howard H. Aiken, the 'Harvard Calculator' was used by the US Navy to solve advanced physics problems.

Abaci, the plural of abacus, allowed individuals to perform arithmetic and tally quantities by moving pebbles called calculi, from which the word 'calculator' is derived.

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

The Model K—named for its construction on a kitchen table—was the first electromechanical digital binary adder, which used an electric circuit to provide the sum of a pair of zeroes and ones in binary.

VisiCalc was the first electronic spreadsheet, released with Apple II's personal computer in 1979

Before 1979, managers were essentially information processors working off paper ledgers. Scenario modeling was slow, manual, and expensive. Companies were understood as organizations that built things with financial analysis as secondary. VisiCalc made calculation so cheap that you could work iteratively, setting out forecasts and tweaking assumptions until you got the answer you wanted. Oks argues It created a new way of seeing the world.

The Ishango bone suggests mathematics was born about 20,000 years ago

Ancient civilizations developed mathematical systems for various purposes, including the Egyptians for the construction of the pyramids and the Ancient Greeks for logical reasoning in theorems. However, these systems were predated by the Ishango bone—found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo—whose notches suggest a base ten system, prime numbers, and simple mathematical operations.

More than 2,000 years ago, a hand-powered model of the solar system called the Antikythera mechanism—the oldest example of an analog computer—could predict solar eclipses.

The Antikythera mechanism: The oldest-known analog computer

A device now considered the world's oldest computer was pulled from a shipwreck more than 120 years ago. Known as the "Antikythera Mechanism," it is now believed to have allowed precise tracking of astronomical positions, and its sophistication overturned understanding of Ancient Greek capabilities.

The term 'algorithm' originated from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī, a 9th-century mathematician whose works introduced Arabic numerals and the decimal-based numeral system to Europe and whose treatise 'Al-Jabr' gave algebra its name.

Calculators convert input values into a form of scientific notation—a fixed set of digits with a decimal multiplied by a base to some exponent—to store and process very large or very small quantities efficiently at the cost of rounding errors.

Despite the abundance of free graphing software, Texas Instruments' monopoly and the continued demand for its use in standardized testing have kept the cost and design of graphing calculators largely unchanged for decades.

The first algorithmic random number generator was developed in 1946

Although previous methods of randomness involved physical tools with limited outcomes, such as dice, or relied on chaotic variables for number generation, such as electronic noise, John Von Neumann's middle-square method turned the problem into a mathematical computation. It has since been replaced by methods that generate numbers from unique initial values, such as the time on a clock.

As of 2025, the College Board has banned the use of calculators with computer algebra systems on the SAT and PSAT.

A 14-year-old "human calculator" shatters six mathematical world records in one day

A teenage prodigy from Maharashtra, India named Aaryan Shukla set the record for the fastest time to mentally add 50 five-digit numbers. He did so in just 25.19 seconds–roughly equivalent to one addition every 0.5 seconds. The math whiz said he practices calculations for around five to six hours a day.

Mathematical breakthroughs influenced Shakespeare’s stories

New ideas in math were transforming Europe at the time Shakespeare penned his plays, including newly popular conceptions of zero via philosophers Descartes and Leibniz.

Early timekeeping tools included sundials, water clocks, and astrolabes

Astrolabes also provided a person's latitude based on the height of the stars in the sky, thus aiding in navigation. Incense and candle clocks relied on the constant burning rate of fire to track the passage of time based on premarked locations with equal-interval spacing.

FLOW-MATIC was the first programming language resembling the English language

As part of the team working on UNIVAC—the first commercially produced electronic digital computer in the US—Grace Hopper helped develop the system that enabled nonprogrammers and businesspeople without a strong mathematics background to use the machine effectively, thereby enhancing the computer's commercial viability.

The Middle Ages produced inventions that still affect our lives today, like coffee houses and improved agricultural techniques.

From the Greek for 'star taker,' the astrolabe allowed individuals to tell time and determine their latitude based on the position of the sun or other stars, as well as calculate the height of objects.

Computer pioneer Alan Turing was also an elite runner

Alan Turing is credited with helping to found modern computer science, in addition to cracking the Nazi code known as Enigma. Beyond these world-historical achievements, the British mathematician also nearly represented his country in the Olympics in the marathon, running just 11 minutes slower than the eventual gold recipient at the 1948 games. Read more on this lesser-known aspect of the man here.

The first compiler to facilitate communication with computers was developed by Grace Hopper

The A-0 program linker automatically translated mathematical symbols into machine-readable binary code. Although it took two years for computer executives to get on board with the idea, the technology was foundational to future programming languages that allowed computers to understand commands written in word-based languages.

In 1880, Jacques and Pierre Curie discovered that electricity could be produced by striking certain materials—the piezoelectric effect—a phenomenon that is seen in barbecue lighters.

How a competition honoring a king's birthday uncovered history's first chaotic system

A committee established a contest for King Oscar II's 60th birthday, featuring four unsolved problems in mathematics, including one on proving the stability of a system of more than two objects held together by gravity. Focusing on three celestial objects, Henri Poincaré won the prize for his proof, which he later learned was incorrect and, upon correcting it, instead proved these systems to be unstable.