Pascaline
A pascaline is like a special kind of calculator that was invented a long, long time ago. It works by using lots of little gears and wheels that turn around and help you do things like adding and subtracting numbers.
Imagine you have a bunch of toys that are all different sizes and shapes. Now pretend you want to count them all, but you're not very good at counting. You could use a pascaline to help you!
The pascaline has little gears and wheels that can be moved around to show how many toys you have. If you want to count five toys, you would turn one of the wheels until it says 5. And if you want to add two more toys, you would turn another wheel until it says 2, and then turn a different wheel to add them to the first number.
It might seem like using a pascaline is a lot of work compared to just using a regular calculator or counting by hand, but back when it was invented, it was a really big deal! People didn't have all the fancy technology we have now, so the pascaline was really helpful for doing complicated math problems.
Imagine you have a bunch of toys that are all different sizes and shapes. Now pretend you want to count them all, but you're not very good at counting. You could use a pascaline to help you!
The pascaline has little gears and wheels that can be moved around to show how many toys you have. If you want to count five toys, you would turn one of the wheels until it says 5. And if you want to add two more toys, you would turn another wheel until it says 2, and then turn a different wheel to add them to the first number.
It might seem like using a pascaline is a lot of work compared to just using a regular calculator or counting by hand, but back when it was invented, it was a really big deal! People didn't have all the fancy technology we have now, so the pascaline was really helpful for doing complicated math problems.
Related topics others have asked about: