Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar
Charles Xavier Thomas (born May 5, 1785 in Colmar , † March 12, 1870 in Paris ) was the inventor of a calculating machine .
Life
Charles Xavier Thomas was born on May 5, 1785 in the city of Colmar ( Alsace ) as the son of the doctor Joseph Antoine Thomas, who was married to Françoise-Xavier Anselin.
Between 1809 and 1817 Thomas was in the service of the French army. He was mainly active in the procurement of food. In this context he also traveled to Portugal and Spain . In 1810 he was sent to Seville , where he met Frasquita Garcia de Ampudia Alvarez. After a short time he married her. From this marriage there were seven sons and three daughters.
After Thomas had resigned from the army, he - together with Jacques Lafitte - became the main shareholder of an insurance company. The necessary calculations of insurance claims moved him to build a calculating machine. As early as 1820 he had the first model patented and named it " Arithmomètre ". Although others had already worked successfully with the development of calculating machines before him, most of the time it remained with individual pieces, as production failed due to manufacturing inadequacies. Thomas, on the other hand, had around 1500 machines manufactured in his own workshop over the years. These were mainly used in the offices of French officials and in insurance companies. These machines did not come onto the German market until after 1878. The engineer Arthur Burkhardt founded a calculating machine factory in the Ore Mountains, where he built calculating machines based on the Thomas model.
Honors
Charles-Xavier Thomas received one of the highest recognitions in France for the development of the “Arithmomètre”: in 1821 he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor .
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ Andreas Rossmann : Numbers miracle. Historical calculating machine for the Arithmeum in Bonn . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of November 1, 2017, p. 13.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Thomas de Colmar, Charles Xavier |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Thomas, Charles Xavier |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Inventor of a calculating machine |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 5, 1785 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Colmar |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 12, 1870 |
| Place of death | Paris |