![]() ![]() ![]() In their letters and conversations, Schickard and Kepler discussed the latest mathematical and scientific achievements, including logarithms and Napier’s rods. (And he took over Maestlin’s chair when the professor died in 1631.) The two men corresponded with each other for several years, and Schickard looked after Kepler’s son when the young man attended the University of Tubingen. Kepler was impressed with the multitalented Schickard and later asked him to draw the tables of figures for his great work, Harmonice Mundi (World Harmony, 1619). Their relationship speaks well of Schickard, who was only a twenty-five-year-old deacon at the time, not only because the great Kepler was interested in him but because Schickard himself was willing to risk the general disgrace that surrounded a man whose family had been touched by the devil and whose religious beliefs contradicted the church’s. Although Kepler was twenty-four years older than Schickard, the two men had much in common, professionally and personally – the same religion, the same alma mater, the same home province, the same scientific interests – and they became friends. It is believed that Michael Maestlin, an astronomy professor at the university, introduced Schickard to Kepler. Ironically, his religious stand caused him infinitely greater grief than his revolutionary scientific achievements, which most people didn’t understand and, therefore, were less well known. Imperial mathematician to the Holy Roman Emperor, Kepler was a famous and controversial man, much persecuted for his religious beliefs he was a Lutheran with strong Calvinist leanings, and his faith ran counter to the prevailing dogma. The old woman, whom the mathematician had once described as “thin, garrulous, and bad-tempered,” faced torture and trial (in that order), and Kepler was on his way to Leonberg to arrange for her defense and eventual acquittal. Kepler was passing through Tubingen on his way to Leonberg, the Württemberg town where his mother had been accused of being a witch. ![]() In the winter of 1617, Schickard met Johannes Kepler, the great mathematician and astronomer. A detail of one of Schickard's maps, showing a section of Wiirttemberg He was a universal man – the first of many in the history of computers – with a rare mixture of scientific and artistic ability. Even at a time when the extent of knowledge in any field was considerably smaller than it is today, and a determined individual could master several diverse disciplines, the range and variety of Schickard’s achievements are impressive. He was also a skilled mechanic, cartographer, and engraver whose published writings span an extraordinarily wide range of subjects – mathematics, astronomy, optics, meteorology, cartography, Semitic studies, and theology. Schickard was a polymath, with a wonderful talent for languages. A prolific scholar, Schickard wrote dozens of books and monographs, including a Hebrew grammar, published when he was twenty-two, and a dissertation on ancient Hebrew coins. From 1613 to 1619, he served as a pastor or deacon in several nearby towns, and then returned to his alma mater as a professor of Hebrew and Oriental languages. In addition to theology, he specialized in what were then known as the Oriental languages – Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Syrian. (The scholarship was awarded by the government of Württemberg, then a quasi-independent state.) After graduating from the monastery, he entered the seminary at the University of Tubingen, where he studied theology and prepared for the ministry. A precocious child, he won a scholarship to a monastery school in the nearby town of Tubingen. His father, Lukas, was a carpenter his mother, Margaret, the daughter of a Lutheran minister. Schickard was born in Herrenberg, a small town near Stuttgart, in southwestern Germany, on 22 April 1592. Wilhelm Schickard (1592-1635) in a portrait at the University of Tiibingen This fortuitous discovery was made in 1935 by an alert German historian by the name of Franz Hammer, and it led to the reconstruction of Schickard’s machine and to the historical resurrection of its inventor. Schickard’s calculator was built in 1623 – the year Pascal was born. As it turns out, however, the first calculator wasn’t invented by Pascal but by an obscure German professor named Wilhelm Schickard. Pascal’s machine was a small metal box equipped with a set of interlocking metal gears by turning the numbered dials on the outside of the box, you could add and subtract. For hundreds of years, historians believed that the great French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal invented the first mechanical calculator in approximately 1642. ![]() Despite the rapid proliferation of digital electronics, the world is still thickly populated with analog gadgets, and the evolution of these machines is closely linked with the invention of the computer. ![]()
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