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Wilhelm Schickard (22 April 1592 – 24 October 1635) was a German professor of Hebrew and Astronomy who became famous in the second part of the 20th century after Dr. Franz Hammer, a biographer (along with Max Caspar) of Johannes Kepler, claimed that the drawings of a calculating clock, predating the public release of Pascal's calculator by twenty years, had been discovered in two unknown letters written by Schickard to Johannes Kepler in 1623 and 1624.〔Jean Marguin p. 48 (1994)〕 Dr. Hammer asserted that because these letters had been lost for three hundred years, Blaise Pascal had been called〔"() but it was not until 1642 that Blaise Pascal gave us the first mechanical calculating machine in the sense that the term is used today." Howard Aiken, Proposed automatic calculating machine, presented to IBM in 1937〕 and celebrated as〔"Pascal's invention of the calculating machine, just three hundred years ago, was made while he was a youth of nineteen. He was spurred to it by seeing the burden of arithmetical labor involved in his father's official work as supervisor of taxes at Rouen. He conceived the idea of doing the work mechanically, and developed a design appropriate for this purpose ; showing herein the same combination of pure science and mechanical genius that characterized his whole life. But it was one thing to conceive and design the machine, and another to get it made and put into use. Here were needed those practical gifts that he displayed later in his inventions..." Magazine Nature, Prof. S. Chapman, ''Pascal tercentenary celebration'', London, (1942)〕 the inventor of the mechanical calculator in error during all this time. After careful examination it was found that Schikard's drawings had been published at least once per century starting from 1718,〔(History of computers ) The calculating Clock of Wilhelm Schickard. Retrieved January 31, 2012〕 that his machine was not complete and required additional wheels and springs〔Michael Williams, p.122 (1997)〕 and that it was designed around a ''single tooth'' carry mechanism that didn't work properly when used in calculating clocks.〔Michael Williams, p.124,128 (1997)〕〔''Single tooth'' carry mechanisms worked well in pedometers of the 16th century and were still used in mechanical odometers and gas meters during the 20th century.〕 Schickard's machine was the first of several designs of ''direct entry'' calculating machines in the 17th century (including the designs of Blaise Pascal, Tito Burattini, Samuel Morland and René Grillet).〔Please see Mechanical calculator#Calculating clocks〕 The Schickard machine was particularly notable for its integration of an ingenious system of rotated Napier's rods for multiplication with a first known design for an adding machine, operated by rotating knobs for input, and with a register of rotated numbers showing in windows for output. Taton has argued that Schickard's work had no impact on the development of mechanical calculators.〔René Taton, p. 81 (1969)〕 However, whilst there can be debate about what constitutes a "mechanical calculator" later devices, such as Moreland's multiplying and adding instruments when used together, Caspar Schott's Cistula, René Grillet's machine arithmétique, and Claude Perrault's rhabdologique at the end of the century, and later, the Bamberger Omega developed in the early 20th Century, certainly followed the same path pioneered by Schickard with his ground breaking combination of a form of Napier's rods and adding machine designed to assist multiplication.〔(see for example discussion of true multiplying machines in http://things-that-count.net )〕 He is considered as the 'father of computing age'. ==Life== Schickard was born in Herrenberg and educated at the University of Tübingen, receiving his first degree, B.A. in 1609 and M.A. in 1611. He studied theology and oriental languages at Tübingen until 1613. In 1613 he became a Lutheran minister continuing his work with the church until 1619 when he was appointed professor of Hebrew at the University of Tübingen. Schickard was a universal scientist and taught biblical languages such as Aramaic as well as Hebrew at Tübingen. In 1631 he was appointed professor of astronomy at the University of Tübingen. His research was broad and included astronomy, mathematics and surveying. He invented many machines such as one for calculating astronomical dates and one for Hebrew grammar. He made significant advances in mapmaking, producing maps that were far more accurate than previously available.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.thocp.net/biographies/schickard_wilhelm.html )〕 He was, among his other skills, a renowned wood and copperplate engraver.〔 Wilhelm Schickard died of the bubonic plague in Tübingen, on 23 or 24 October 1635.〔 In 1651, Giovanni Riccioli named the lunar crater Schickard after him. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Wilhelm Schickard」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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