Wilhelm Schickard

Wilhelm Schickard (1592 to 1635) was a German professor of Hebrew and astronomy at the University of Tübingen, a universal scientist whose work reached into mathematics, surveying and mapmaking. Educated at Tübingen, he became a Lutheran minister in 1613, professor of Hebrew in 1619 and professor of astronomy in 1631. He is famous as the designer of a calculating clock described in two letters to Johannes Kepler in 1623 and 1624, an adding machine combined with rotating Napier's bones for multiplication, which predates Pascal's calculator by about twenty years, although the article notes that the machine was incomplete as drawn and that historians dispute its influence. He also made maps far more accurate than earlier ones, was a skilled engraver, and in 1625 published a treatise on ancient Hebrew political theory. He died of the plague in Tübingen, and the lunar crater Schickard is named after him.