Blaise Pascal was born in Clermont-Ferrand, France in 1623.  He enjoyed mathematics and moved into that study.
His father became a tax collector for the government in upper Normandy.  In order to help his father Pascal developed the first numeric calculator in 1642.  An addition machine had been invented earlier in the century, but this one was sold to the public. 

His calculation machine never caught on and the idea would have to wait.  However, this was an important step to the modern computer.