A Paris court blocks the auction of the earliest-known calculator.

Harry Sekulich   BBC20 November 2025
One of the world's first calculating machines will not go to auction as scheduled after a Paris court provisionally blocked La Pascaline, a 400-year-old calculating machine, from being exported from France.

Auction house Christie's confirmed it will not proceed with bidding for the machine, developed by the French mathematician Blaise Pascal in 1642.