Pascal's Pascaline, the first calculator, to auction at Christie's Paris

A Pascaline, one of only nine known surviving examples of the first mechanical calculator invented by Blaise Pascal in 1642, will be auctioned at Christie's Paris on November 19. Estimated at €2-3 million, the device was created by Pascal at age 19 to assist his father Étienne, a tax official in Rouen. Pascal produced about fifty prototypes and twenty machines, but high production costs halted manufacturing. The Pascaline on offer comes from the private collection of Léon Parcé (1894-1979), a major Pascal collector. Other highlights from the Bibliothèque Léon Parcé include a first edition of Pascal's Pensées (est. €200,000-300,000) and rare manuscripts by Descartes, Newton, and Montaigne. The Pascaline will be exhibited in Paris until September 23, then from November 13-19, with previews in New York (November 11-15) and Hong Kong (October 23-29). Of the nine known Pascaline machines, two are at the Musée Henri-Lecoq in Clermont-Ferrand, four at the Musée des arts et métiers in Paris, one in Dresden, one in Bonn (owned by IBM), and the Parcé example. The auction also highlights Pascal's connection to Clermont-Ferrand, where a statue by Eugène Guillaume (1880) commemorates his Puy de Dôme experiment on atmospheric pressure. Pascal's urban transport idea, the carrosse à cinq sols, operated in Paris from 1662 to 1677.