Charles Xavier Thomas

Charles Xavier Thomas ( born May 5, 1785 Colmar, † March 12, 1870 in Paris) was the inventor of a calculating machine.

Life

Born Charles Xavier Thomas on May 5, 1785 the city of Colmar (Alsace ), the son of the physician 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 very involved in the procurement of food. In this context, he also traveled to Portugal and Spain. In 1810 he was sent to Seville, where she learned Frasquita Garcia Alvarez de Ampudia know. After a short time he married her. From this marriage seven sons and three daughters were born. Thomas acknowledged later (about 1818) to serve in the army and was, together with Jacques Lafitte, the main shareholder of an insurance company. As the resulting necessary calculations of insurance claims led him to deal with the construction of a calculating machine. Already in 1820 he had the first model patent and called it " Arithmomètre ". Although others had already successfully employed in front of him with the development of computing machines, but mostly it was for single pieces, as a production of the technical production shortcomings failed. Thomas took a little later on his own production, in about 1500 machines were made ​​in the course of time. These came mainly in French offices of officials and insurance companies to use. In Germany, these machines did not arrive until after 1878 are used. The engineer Arthur Burkhardt founded in the Ore Mountains, a calculating machine factory in which he built on the basis of Thomas 's model calculators.

Charles Xavier Thomas received a high appreciation for the development of the " Arithmomètre " in France, 1821 he was appointed a Knight of the Legion of Honour.