THE RISE OF THE » INDUSTRIAL ERA « MADE ALSO THE ERA OF MECHANICAL CALCULATORS
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In the beginning calculating machines were unique pieces, hand-made and artful
"Curiosities" - Gifts for Kings to entertain their court. With the rise of the
industrial era the demand for calculating machines increased. In 1828 the first
mass production, a STEPPED DRUM machine, was made by Charles Xaver Thomas in
Colmar. The calculator was based on a principle invented by Gottfried W. Leibniz
in 1700. About 1,500 of these "Arithmometer" machines were sold.
In 1872 an American, Frank S. Baldwin, patented the PIN WHEEL - in 1874 a Swede,
Willgodt T. Odhner working for Nobel in St. Petersburg / Russland, had the same
idea and got a patent in Europe. With these calculating machines one could add,
substract, multiply and divide. They were smaller, lighter and cheaper than the
Stepped Drum machines and became very popular. An important feature of Odhner's
invention was time-splitting the 10s-CARRY which enables an addition of
99999999 + 1 without friction problems. In 1892 Odhner licensed his patent
rights to the sewing machine company GRIMME, NATALIS & CO. in Braunschweig. This
company later changed its name to »BRUNSVIGA« and became very successful. After
the "October Revolution" in 1917, Odhner was forced to leave. His factory in St.
Petersburg was dismounted and rebuild in Moscow. Feliks Dzerzhinsky, head of the
KGB, was put in charge of the factory and renamed the machines »FELIKS«. Odhner
moved to Goeteborg / Sweden and continued to produce calculators under the
trade mark »ORIGINAL-ODHNER«.
Other companies FACIT, SCHUBERT, THALES, TRIUMPHATOR, WALTHER ... joined the
growing calculator market and improved on Odhner's design. In the beginning
the COUNTER for crank-turns had no 10s-carry feature. TRIUMPHATOR was the
first company with 10s-Carry Counters on the market, enabeling "Short-Cut
Multiplication" ( instead 17 only 3 crank-turns for multiplying 89*89 ).
A true genius in the field was the inventor Christel Hamann of Berlin. His
motorized PROPORTIONAL LEVER Principle of 1910 was marketed by MERCEDES
BUEROMASCHINEN. In 1925 he invented the SWITCHING-LATCH-WHEEL. These
calculators, which looked like Odhner machines, where produced under his name
and direction by DEUTSCHE TELEPHONWERKE & KABELINDUSTRIE ( = DeTeWe ). The
manual HAMANN-MANUS and also the motorized MERCEDES-EUKLID calculators, had
automatic division. His motorized »Automat-S« is impressive: Division
and "Short-Cut Multiplication" are incorporated as "Hardware Algorithms".
In 1912 Frank S. Baldwin together with Jay R. Monroe in the USA invented
another mechanic for calculators, the SPLIT STEPPED DRUM. With their light-
weight, full-keyboard machines, MONROE captured the market. The calculators
had a very interesting mechanic for its 10s-CARRY.
Machines with 4 basic arithmetics are important for engineering calculations,
but PRINTING ADDING MACHINES are a necessity for accounting. The VICTOR
company in the USA was very successful in this market. They started with
"Full" keyboards and produced later also "10-Block" keyboards we are still
using today. See its principle in the figure 10-BLOCK KEYBOARD.
A very different type of high-speed adding machine is the COMPTOMETER, an
invention of Dorr E. Felt in 1885. William S. Burroughs also had the same
idea at this time. In the patent struggle Felt won - but in the end,
BURROUGHS became the more successful maker of calculating machines.
One of the most interesting calculating machines also has a very interesting
history. The CURTA is the world smallest mechanical full-function calculating
machine. Kurt Herzstark invented it while he was a prisoner in the Buchenwald
Concentration Camp. The story was published with amazing pictures of mechanical
details by Cliff Stoll in »Scientific American« 01/2004. The CURTA works with
a modified STEPPED DRUM. It was a product of its best in fine-mechanics and
is today in high demand for collectors of calculators around the world.
"Enjoy to visite the On-Line Museum!"
Choices (1) START Tour A ... Z in the Department CALCULATORS
(2) OVERVIEW what is to find where
(3) HOME PAGE START-SITE
"THANKS!" to Dr. Michael Giehl from FU-Berlin / Klinikum » Benjamin Franklin «.
In the years 2000..2003 "Mikey" established the foundation for this hand coded
HomePage. My "Take-Over" was easy with his friendly help.
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© C.HAMANN www.tfh-berlin.de/~hamann impressum 01/10/10
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INTRODUCTION CALCULATORS 