"It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could be relegated to anyone else if machines were used."
— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
It Is Unworthy Of Excellent Men
It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.
About this quote
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz wrote this in a manuscript of 1685 later quoted in Martin Gardner's New Mathematical Diversions (1966). Having himself built one of the first mechanical calculators capable of multiplication and division — the Stepped Reckoner, demonstrated to the Royal Society in 1673 — Leibniz was in a unique position to advocate for automating arithmetic. He saw mechanical calculation not as a threat to human intellect but as its liberation: freeing superior minds for discovery, proof, and invention.
Source
Quoted in New Mathematical Diversions by M. Gardner