Charles Xavier Thomas
Encyclopedia
Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar (1785–1870) was a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 inventor and entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...

 best known for designing, patenting and manufacturing the first commercially successful mechanical calculator, the Arithmometer
Arithmometer
An Arithmometer or Arithmomètre was a mechanical calculator that could add and subtract directly and could perform long multiplications and divisions effectively by using a movable accumulator for the result. Patented in France by Thomas de Colmar in 1820 and manufactured from 1851 to 1915, it...

 and for founding the insurance companies "Le Soleil" and "L'aigle" which, under his leadership, became the number one insurance group in France at the beginning of the Second Empire
Second French Empire
The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...

.

After a short employment in the French administration, he joined the French army in 1809 eventually reaching the level of General Manager of the supply store of all of the armies located in Spain in 1813. Shortly thereafter he was promoted to Inspector of Supply for the entire French army. It was during that time that he conceived the idea of the Arithmometer to help him with the great deal of calculations that he had to perform.

Back into civilian life, in 1819, he co-founded the fire insurance company "Phoenix" which he left quickly because of the lack of support for his new ideas from his partners and shareholders. Ten years later, in 1829, he started the fire insurance company "Le Soleil" that he grew by merger and acquisitions until his death. In 1843 he started another insurance company called "L'Aigle incendie". With the Sun (soleil) symbol of previous kings of France and the Eagle (aigle) reminiscent of Napoleon, he had all basis covered to attract a wide range of customers in a very divided 19th century France. By his death the "Aigle - Soleil" group was the biggest insurance business in France and he owned 81% of it!. Eighty years later, in 1946, it was nationalized and finally merged with "La National" in 1968 to become the GAN company which is still in business today.

Thomas was made Chevalier of the Legion d'Honor for his invention of the Arithmometer in 1821. This is when he changed his name from "M. Charles Xavier Thomas" to "M. le Chevalier Thomas, de Colmar" and later simply "Thomas de Colmar". Again because of the Arithmometer, he was raised to the level of Officier of the Legion d'Honor in 1857.

Initially Thomas spent all of his time and energy on his insurance business, therefore there is a hiatus of more than thirty years in between the first model of the Arithmometer introduced in 1820 and its true commercialization in 1852. By the time of his death in 1870, his manufacturing facility had built around 1,000 Arithmometers, making it the first mass produced mechanical calculator in the world, and at the time, the only mechanical calculator reliable and dependable enough to be used in places like government agencies, banks, insurance companies and observatories just to name a few. The manufacturing of the Arithmometer went on for another 40 years until around 1914.

He married Francesca (Frasquita) Garcia de Ampudia Alvarez in Seville in 1812. She came from an old Andalusia
Andalusia
Andalusia is the most populous and the second largest in area of the autonomous communities of Spain. The Andalusian autonomous community is officially recognised as a nationality of Spain. The territory is divided into eight provinces: Huelva, Seville, Cádiz, Córdoba, Málaga, Jaén, Granada and...

n noble family. Together, they had ten children from whom: Joseph Thomas d'Alvarez, Charlotte (countess de Rancy), Louis Thomas who married Livia Carafa, Duchess of Bojano
Bojano
Bojano or Boiano is a town and comune in the province of Campobasso, Molise, south central Italy.-History:Originally named Bovianum, it was settled by the 7th century BC. As the capital of the Pentri, a tribe of the Samnites, it played a major role in the Samnite Wars, as well as in the Social War,...

 and took the name of Thomas de Bojano, Frasquita (Mrs Soultzner) and Henriette (Countess de Dalmas).

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