Pascal Computer: The first computer protected by a patent

Source: Science and Technology Daily

Interactive model of Pascal Calculator produced by Tsinghua Science Museum Image source: Tsinghua Science Museum

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In 1642, the 19-year-old French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) invented a mechanical computer that could achieve automatic carrying, multiplying, and dividing four kinds of operations, known as pascal's arithmetic machine, also known as Pascaline, hereinafter referred to as pascaline. Pascal machines enjoy many firsts: it is the first computer to go into production, the first commercial computer, the first patented computer, the first computer to be written into the encyclopedia, etc., and its historical value is self-evident.

Pascal's original intention in developing the computer was to reduce his father's heavy tax calculation burden.

At that time, france circulated three units of currency: livre, sol, denier, 1 livre equal to 20 Soviet, 1 Su equal to 12 Denier, which greatly increased the amount and complexity of the calculation and complexity of fiscal and tax work. Pascal's computer has undergone at least three generations of drastic improvements from idea to finalization: "If you want to understand the invention of this machine, I can happily tell you that it is currently presenting a very different way than I tried at the beginning." The original machine, both in material and form, was different from what it is now, and although many people would have loved it, it did not completely satisfy me. In the process of constantly improving it, I unconsciously made a second type, but I still found it inconvenient and unacceptable. In order to correct it, I designed a third one, which has a reed and is very simple in structure... At the request of many people, I have used it several times and it always works well. ”

Pascal's design ideas were able to land quickly and translate into models, apparently supported by local craftsmen. He wrote: "All my theoretical ideas could not have been realized without the help of a worker, whose craftsmanship was extremely skilled, and who, according to the dimensions and proportions I had told him, used a file and a hammer to process the parts of the machine one by one." Pascal worked with more than one worker, but he did not mention their names or guilds. But it is not difficult to guess that these workers should come from goldsmiths or watch workshops.

The relationship between Pascal and the craftsman is delicate. The difficulties in the road of research and development did not crush him, and it was the craftsmen who crushed him. According to his account, just a few months after the development was carried out, imitations had appeared on the streets of Rouen. This is a similar machine built by a watchmaker on the basis of his model: "He [referred to this watchmaker] has no talent except skillful manipulation of tools, lacks knowledge of geometry and mechanics ... he has made a useless thing, which looks real on the surface and polishes well on the outside, but the internal structure is so poor that it cannot be used at all." He went on to write that people did not understand the use of the machine at the time, but only felt novel, and one collector even bought it and put it in his own curiosity house. The whole thing made Pascal feel extremely desperate, and even had the idea of giving up: "The appearance of this little freak (cepetit avorton) discouraged me to the extreme, and the enthusiasm for continuing to complete the model suddenly cooled, I dismissed all the workers (tous les ouvriers, indicating that there was more than one craftsman with whom he worked), and decided to abandon the whole plan, because I realized that there would be such a bold person, who would use this new idea to make counterfeits, Destroy the use value of this new thing in front of the public. ”

Through this confession, it is not difficult to find that in the process of studying computers, Pascal's motivation has changed. If the computer had been developed only to help his father solve his tax calculation problems, he could have gone on inventing it without having to pay attention to other people's clumsy imitations. Apparently, pascal had now regarded the computer as the crystallization of his intellectual labor, and plagiarism would not only humiliate him, but also destroy people's confidence in such a new thing as a computer (of course, it would also directly affect the future sales of Pascal machines).

What Pascal did not know was that more than a century ago the craftsmen of Florence and Venice had developed some sort of institutional safeguard to ensure that this intellectual labor (now known as intellectual property) would not be arbitrarily infringed upon. Fortunately, Séguier, the French justice at the time, knew about this patent protection system. Pascal's friend gave him a prototype, which he liked, encouraged Pascal to further improve the machine, and promised to legally protect new inventions. It was with this commitment that Pascal was able to continue the development of computers. This is why he wrote a dedicated message to Sergier. On May 22, 1649, the "Charter" was officially promulgated. It stipulates that no craftsman may imitate the machine or make a similar improved model without Pascal's permission, and foreigners may not sell or display the machine on French soil, and violators will be fined 3,000 livres, of which one-third will belong to Pascal. Pascal should have been one of the first scholars to own patents for inventions in the modern sense, and the Pascal machine became the first computer to be patented, and its research and development process inadvertently promoted the improvement of the modern patent system.

(The author is an assistant professor in the Department of History of Science at Tsinghua University and the head of the Research and Restoration Project Team of the Science Museum.) Source: Science History Public Account, edited and deleted)