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eventVerified

Pascal constructs the Pascaline, a mechanical calculator later museum-held

From 1642 Pascal designed and had built the Pascaline to add and subtract for tax-office arithmetic associated with his father’s work. In the causal graph this event sets in motion the driver Industrial-Policy Activism.

Sources: [1][2]

Read the full account

From 1642 Pascal designed and had built the Pascaline to add and subtract for tax-office arithmetic associated with his father’s work. Surviving machines are in the Musée des Arts et Métiers. He did not open a 21st-century gallery.

Context

A geared adder is a public-administration tool and a luxury object. It is not a computer. Wirth’s 1970 language is another row.

Blaise Pascal is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

Why it matters

High confidence on the machine type and museum objects.

Who was responsible

Contribution type and responsibility level for each recorded actor — not sole-author shorthand.

  • Blaise Pascal

    Person

    Direct responsibility

    responsibility level 0.4 · verified

    Mathematician, Jansenist controversialist, and inventor as documented. Printers, Port-Royal, and later metrologists reuse the name.

What changed

Fact → Driver → Indicator. Relationship strength orders the paths; it is not the observed indicator movement.

    1. FactPascal constructs the Pascaline, a mechanical calculator later museum-held
    2. sets in motionDriverIndustrial-Policy Activism

    impact weight 0.5 · Effect from 1 January 1642 · verified

    High confidence on the machine type and museum objects.

Evidence

The sources behind this fact and its verification state.

Verified2 sources on file
  1. 1.Musée des Arts et Métiers — PascalineMusée des Arts et Métiers · High credibility · verified
  2. 2.MacTutor — Blaise PascalUniversity of St Andrews · High credibility · verified
What the sources establish

Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

Causal path

How this event connects to drivers and indicators in the graph.

  1. ActorBlaise Pascal
  2. contributed toFactPascal constructs the Pascaline, a mechanical calculator later museum-held
  3. sets in motionDriverIndustrial-Policy Activism

Cite this page

Factrail. (2026). Pascal constructs the Pascaline, a mechanical calculator later museum-held. Factrail. https://factrail.ai/facts/pa-pascaline-1642

https://factrail.ai/facts/pa-pascaline-1642

Accessed 16 October 2026.

By the Factrail desk · Method: how we source and score · Last reviewed

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