Unfortunately, even with mechanical calculators, most real world problems required many steps of computation before an answer was determined.

不幸的是，即使使用了机械计算器许多现实问题仍需要许多步骤来确定。

In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, many mechanical calculators were developed, though with little success until the arrival of the arithmometer, a portable and reliable mechanical device that could add, subtract, multiply, and divide numbers.

在17、18和19世纪，开发了很多机械计算器，但在四则计算器到来之前几乎都没有成功，四则计算器是一种便携式且可靠的机械装置，可以对数字进行加、减、乘和除。