Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar
More info
- Born
- Died
- Known for
- The arithmometer, the first mass-produced calculator
- Nationality
- French
The insurance executive who patented the world's first mass-produced calculator in 1820, then let it sit for thirty years before he bothered to sell it.
A Frenchman from Colmar in Alsace who made his career in insurance — he founded the firms Le Soleil and L'Aigle — and built the arithmometer more or less on the side. The patent dates from 1820 and rests on Leibniz's stepped drum, but the machine remained a curiosity for decades: serious production only started in the 1850s, some thirty years later.
Once it reached the market it dominated completely. The arithmometer was the first calculator robust enough to sit on an office desk and be used daily for decades, and it was trailed by copies and successors well into the twentieth century. Thomas de Colmar himself seems to have treated it as a sideline — the insurance money paid the bills.