Blaise Pascal’s Pascaline | Tangente

A very dear Pascaline

This past November 19, a Pascaline dating from 1642, valued at between two and three million euros, was due to go under the hammer at Christie’s in Paris.

Written by

ELISABETH BUSSER

PublishedDecember 16, 2025UpdatedSeptember 18, 20261 min read

This machine, designed by Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) when he was only nineteen, is probably the first mechanical calculator. He devised it to help his father, then first president of the Court of Aids of Normandy, and built around twenty of them. Using toothed wheels and gears, it could perform addition and subtraction and, through repeated operations, multiplication and division (see Les secrets de la pascaline, Jean-Jacques Dupas, Tangente hors-série 85, 2023). The model offered for sale could also be used for surveying calculations: it has eight toothed wheels and a "carry mechanism" that adds the carries during calculations.

According to the latest reports, the sale has been suspended: the Paris Administrative Court temporarily refused permission to export the machine, following a petition signed by numerous scientists (in Le Monde on November 1^st, 2025). The aim now is to have the machine designated a national treasure so that it can no longer leave the country.

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