Pseudonym: Louis de Montalte
Etienne Pascal
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| Blaise Pascal, inventor |
Blaise Pascal was a a child prodigy, and inherited his father's mathematical mind. Ultimately he became a French philospher, mathematician, physicist, inventor and a Catholic writer. He and his sister Jacqueline were educated by his father at home. Blaise was always in poor health and suffered from seizures, but he was bright and he had a head for numbers.
His family were devout Catholics , starting as members of the Jansenists, a splinter group of the Catholic Church. His father was a judge in the tax courts and it was his job to calculate and collect the taxes. Blaise watched his father labor for many hours calculating by hand how much tax he had to collect from each household. In 1643, Blaise invented a mechanical adding machine for his father to calculate the taxes more quickly and accurately. Blaise was 18 years old. He named the adding machine "The Pascaline."
He studied hydrodynamics and hydrostatics and invented the syringe and the hydraulic press. He supplmented his income by writing articles for the Catholic press. Much of his work was published after his death.
His name has been attributed to: Pascal's Principle (hydraulic brakes, jack, and crane), Pascal's Law (they hydraulic lift system), Pascal's Triangle, Pascal's Theorem, and Pascal's Wager (live your life as if God exists because you will lose very little if God turns out to be a myth. If he is real, one stands to gain immeasurably.) The Unversity of Blaise Pascal is in his home town.
He was diversified and in addition to his achievements, he is revered for improving upon the technology used for the roulette machine, the foundations of hydrodynamics. One of his published works was "Provincales" in which he attacked the Jesuits while defending Antoin Arnauld, founder of Jansenism at that time,
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