Johann Helfrich von Müller (January 16, 1746 in

Kleve Kleve (; traditional ; ; ; ; ; Low Rhenish: ''Kleff'') is a town in the Lower Rhine region of northwestern Germany near the Netherlands, Dutch border and the River Rhine. From the 11th century onwards, Cleves was capital of a county and lat ...

– 1830) was an engineer in the Hessian army who conceived the

difference engine A difference engine is an automatic mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions. It was designed in the 1820s, and was created by Charles Babbage. The name ''difference engine'' is derived from the method of finite differen ...

in 1786 (first written reference to the basic principles of a difference machine is dated to 1784), an idea that later evolved into modern computers. In 1784, he was responsible for an improved

adding machine An adding machine is a class of mechanical calculator, usually specialized for bookkeeping calculations. Consequently, the earliest adding machines were often designed to read in particular currencies. Adding machines were ubiquitous office ...

based on principles of

Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (or Leibnitz; – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat who is credited, alongside Sir Isaac Newton, with the creation of calculus in addition to many ...

's stepped reckoner. Müller was demonstrably the first who came up with the idea of calculating mathematical tables automatically by a machine. To achieve this, he planned building a printing differential engine. However, this plan was not realized.

References

Biography of Johann Helfrich Müller
with information on his calculating machines *d'Ocagne, Maurice (1905).
Le Calcul Simplifié Par Les Procedes Mecaniques Et Graphiques
'. Google Book Search. Retrieved on April 23, 2008. *Dr Stefano Zottino ANALYTICAL ENGINE L'IDEA INNOVATIVA DI CHARLES BABBAGE, Thesis, Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia, Italy.
Krause, Christine: Das Positive von Differenzen Die Rechenmaschinen von Müller, Babbage, Scheutz, Wiberg, ...
Engineers from Hesse 1746 births 1830 deaths People from Kleve 18th-century German engineers {{germany-engineer-stub