About Léon Bollée
Léon Bollée (1870–1913) was a French automobile manufacturer and inventor.
Life
Bollée's family were well known bellfounders and his father, Amédée Bollée (1844 – 1917), was a pioneer in the automobile industry who produced several steam cars. Both Léon Bollée and his older brother Amédée-Ernest-Marie (1867 – 1926) became automobile manufacturers.
Calculating machines
In 1887 Bollée began work on three calculating machines: the Direct Multiplier, the Calculating Board and the Arithmographe. Bollée's Multiplier was the first successful direct-multiplying calculator and it won a gold medal at the 1889 Paris Exposition. Three versions of the large multiplier and several smaller machines were developed by Bollée and the devices were patented in France, Belgium, Germany, the USA and Hungary.
Automobiles
Bollée and his father entered a steam car, La Nouvelle, in the 1895 Paris-Bordeaux-Paris race and Bollée went on to develop a gasoline-powered vehicle in 1895 which was entered in the 1896 Paris-Marseille-Paris race.
