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Computing machines can be dated back to the advent of the abacus, a wooden rack holding two horizontal wires with beads strung across them. Several different types of arithmetic operations could be performed when these beads were manipulated. Another early calculator, later called Napier’s Bones, made its debut in the early 1600’s. This device, invented by Charles Napier, consisted of a series of rods that could be used to perform multiplication. The first digital calculation machine was built by Blaise Pascal in 1642. Pascal, intending to help his father (a tax collector), created a system of dials that could perform the addition of numbers. Several decades later, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz invented a digital apparatus that could not only add, but could also multiply. It was not until 1820 that a mechanical calculator, developed by Charles Xavier Thomas, was introduced that could perform all four basic arithmetic operations. While Thomas was busy creating the desktop calculator, Charles Babbage (a mathematics professor in Cambridge, England), began to design a more complex machine. In 1822, with financial help from the British government, Babbage demonstrated a working model of the Difference Engine. Though havin