The document discusses early calculating devices, including the abacus invented in China to perform simple math, Napier's Bones developed by John Napier to perform addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, the Pascaline invented by Blaise Pascal in 1642 which could do addition and subtraction, the Difference Engine designed by Charles Babbage in 1822 which could perform mathematical and astronomical calculations and store data temporarily, and the Analytical Engine also designed by Babbage which was considered the first general purpose computer with a mill calculating unit like a modern CPU.