ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Stepped reckoner

Do you know what a calculator is? It's a machine that helps us do math calculations easily and quickly, right? Well, a long-long time ago, people didn't have this machine, and they used a special kind of calculator called a stepped reckoner.

A stepped reckoner was a machine that helped people add, subtract, multiply, and divide numbers. It was invented by a smart man named Gottfried Leibniz in the 17th century. The stepped reckoner looked like a big box with a lot of wheels and cogs inside.

Each of these wheels had numbers and symbols on them. Whenever you wanted to do a math problem, you would turn the wheels to the right numbers and symbols, and the machine would show you the answer.

But why was it called a stepped reckoner? Well, the wheels in the machine had tiny steps on them. When you turned the wheel one step, the next wheel would move one step too. That's how the machine knew how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide.

Even though we may not use a stepped reckoner nowadays, it was a very important invention for its time. It helped people do math calculations more accurately and faster than before.