This country and the present age have been pre-eminently distinguished for ingenuity in the contrivance, or in the improvement, of machinery. In none has that been more singularly evinced, than in the instance to which I have the gratification of now calling the attention of the Society. The invention is as novel, as the ingenuity manifested by it is extraordinary.

In other cases, mechanical devices have substituted machines for simpler tools or for bodily labour. The artist has been furnished with command of power beyond human strength, joined with precision surpassing any ordinary attainment of dexterity. He is enabled to perform singly the work of a multitude, with the accuracy of a select few, by mechanism which takes the place of manual labour or assists its efforts. But the invention, to which I am adverting, comes in place of mental exertion: it substitutes mechanical performance for an intellectual process: and that performance is effected with celerity and exactness unattainable in ordinary methods, even by incessant practice and undiverted attention.

The invention is in scope, as in execution, unlike anything before accomplished to assist operose computations. I pass by, as what is obviously quite different, the Shwanpan, or Chinese abacus, the tangible arithmetic of Frend, Napier's rods, with the ruder devices of antiquity, the tallies, the cheque, and the counters. They are unconnected with it in purpose, as in form. Mechanical aid of calculation has in truth been before proposed by very eminent persons. Pascal invented a very complicated instrument for the simplest arithmetical processes, addition and subtraction, and reaching by very tedious repetition to multiplication and division, Leibnitz proposed another, of which the power extends no further.