Luigi Torchi was an Italian inventor. He invented the first direct multiplication machine in 1834.
History of Computers and Computing This was also the second key-driven machine in the world, following that of James White in 1822.Roegel, Denis. "Before Torchi and Schwilgué, There Was White." IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 38.4 (2016): 92–93.
/ref> Very little is known about the inventor and the machine. It is only known that he was a carpenter; his machine was awarded a gold medal from the Imperial-regio istituto lombardo di scienze, lettere e arti in

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

in 1834. A document of the award provides the known details of the machine, while a second document shows a drawing of the machine itself. However, no detailed documents about how it worked are known to exist. The machine was exhibited in Brera between 1834 and 1837; it was later found by

Giovanni Schiaparelli Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli ( , , ; 14 March 1835 – 4 July 1910) was an Italian astronomer and science historian. Biography He studied at the University of Turin, graduating in 1854, and later did research at Berlin Observatory, unde ...

in bad condition. Subsequently, no further information about the machine exists.

Bibliography

* Silvio Hénin, ''Two Early Italian Key-Driven Calculators,'' IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 32, no. 1, 2010, pp. 34–43. * Silvio Hénin, ''Early Italian computing machines and their inventors.'' Reflections on the History of Computing. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2012. 204–230.

External links

History-Computer.com: Luigi Torchi
{{DEFAULTSORT:Torchi, Luigi 19th-century Italian inventors Italian scientific instrument makers 1810s births Year of death missing