Joseph-Maire Jacuard builds an automatic loom controlled by punch cards.

Frenchman Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar invents the Arithmometer, the first mass-produced calculator.

Charles Babbage designs a prototype for the difference engine. It is produced in 1832 with the help of Joseph Clement. The project is cancelled in 1842 due to design and budget problems.

Babbage and Joseph Clement produce a prototype segment of his difference engine.

Swedes George and Edvard Scheutz build a 3rd-order difference engine with printer, based on Babbage's work. A full-scale version called The Tabulating Machine is released in 1853.

George Boole invents Boolean Algebra.

Frenchman Amadee Mannheim develops a 10" slide rule. Slide rules came into wide use in the 1850s, as the field of engineering grew.

The first mass-produced calculator appears. Two inventors are credited with its production: American Frank S. Baldwin, and Swede T.Odhner.

American Dorr Eugene Felt builds the Comptometer, a type of mechanical adding machine. The comptometer was the first adding device to work by pressing an arrangement of keys by hand. Comptometers with keys from 30 to over 100 keys remained in use until the developemtn of advanced computer software in the 1990s (1).