Category: Timeline Stories

In the spring of 1888 the young inventor and self-taught engineer Frederick Fuller of Waterbury, Connecticut, saw a model of cash register while working in the shop of the Specialty Manufacturing Co., a firm engaged in special brass work, models of inventions, clock movements, etc., owned by the Griswold family. Fuller was assigned to work on parts of the model, ordered by another inventor, and came to the conclusion, that there were many ways in which a better cash register could be made, and one day he made bold to say as much to the owner, Mr. George G. Griswold (1817-1891). “Do you think you can make a better one?”, asked Mr. Griswold. “I don’t think I can. I know I can.”, answered self-confidently Fuller.

Griswold was impressed and decided to put Fuller to work on his ideas and also assigned his son George H. Griswold (1855-1942) to work with him. This was a great break for both young men, they became fast friends and went at their new task with so much enthusiasm that in less than a year they had perfected a machine and applied for patents on a device, that was destined to play an important part in cash register history.

Fuller and Griswold applied for the patent on 4 April 1889, and it was granted on 4 February 1890 (US patent No. 420554). Several months after filing their original application, they discovered a method of indicating cash amounts that they believed would result in a better machine. Accordingly, they filed a second application and obtained another patent (US patent No. 420555).

The inventors succeeded in interesting a number of Waterbury men who took stock in a company to make and market their cash register. This was the first Union Cash Register Company. They started out in a most modest manner. Lacking money for tools for extensive production, they made all machines by hand. By the time they had made and sold about 75 registers, they ran out of capital and credit. To raise more money they moved to the city of Trenton, N. J.

George Griswold entered the sales department, while Fuller kept on as the superintendent of the plant. The basic difference between the Union cash register and the others on the market at that time was that the Union machine was deliberately designed for use in general lines of retail business, whereas the others were made for and sold to saloons. The Union was a success from the start. Even in Waterbury, while they were turning out their first handful of machines, they were becoming known.

In 1892 Union Cash Register was awarded the John Scott Medal of the Franklin Institute, which had an asset of great advertising value. Let’s examine the cash register of Fuller and Griswold, using the patent drawing (see the nearby image).

The objects of the invention are:
1. To provide a machine that shall temporarily indicate the amount of each sale, so that the customer may see the same as it appears upon the face of the machine, and which shall, in addition to the temporary indication thus made, transfer the amount of said sale by a process of addition to a permanent totalizing-register, which may be inaccessible to the salesman, and which will at all times show the sum-total of sales to any person having access to the interior of the case without any calculation upon the part of the observer.
2. To provide a machine in which any of the several parts of the permanent registering mechanism may be operated forward, but in which none of the said parts is capable of any retrograde movement.
3. To provide a mechanism whereby upon the opening of the cash drawer the indicating mechanism will return to its normal position and the said indication be effaced.
4. To provide means for locking the next higher segment as against simultaneous operation with the one below it.
5. To provide a construction that shall be cheap and simple in all its parts, certain in its action, and positive in operation as far as may be.

In the operation of the machine organized as above described the operator places his fingers upon the appropriate handle of the proper segment and depresses said segment until the fingers come in contact with the table. This causes the amount corresponding to the handle selected to appear upon the indicating wheel, which shows through the appropriate opening in the case. It also causes the same amount to be added to the totalizing register, and the segment is retained in the position to which it has been carried by the engagement with the sector-teeth thereon of the spring-actuated clicks. Of course in registering uneven amounts the depression of more than one segment is required-say for $3.47 the units segment is pressed downward from seven, the tens from four, and the hundreds from three, which may be done freely so long as it is not sought to depress them simultaneously. Even amounts are indicated and registered by means of one segment only. For instance, for eight cents, the units segment is depressed from eight; for eighty cents, the tens segment from eight; for eight dollars, the hundreds segment from eight, etc. When the drawer is opened, the cam-slots therein, by moving the rod which operates the clicks, causes these latter to be disengaged from the segments, which, carrying with them the indicating wheels, return to their normal positions.

While the indicating wheels are always at zero, except at such times as they are depressed and so retained by the clicks, the totalizing register has added to it at each operation of the segments, or any of them, the amount thereby caused to appear upon the indicating wheel or wheels. The person having access to the interior of the case may therefore obtain the full amount of sales at any time by reading as a total the figures on the totalizing-register wheels which are in the line for totals, which line may be indicated by marks upon the sides of the ease or in any other desired manner.

When at any time it is desired to turn the totalizing register to zero for commencing a new account upon the machine, it is only necessary to turn each totalizing-register wheel, beginning with units, by means of its segment, until it stands at zero.

In order to make available to more users the principles behind his first cash register, Fuller devoted his next research to a simple cash register that could be sold at a lower price, while retaining many of the unique and excellent features of the original machine. The result was a machine with a clearly legible customer reading chart, simple in design and operation (see the nearby image), patented in 1897 (No. 585468). In the same 1897, Fuller invented another improvement to the cash register which was described in the patent application No. 585565.

In the 1890s the Union kept steadily at the job of improving the register. Fuller perfected and patented a printing mechanism, and also a device that would give a printed receipt to the customer. Union however was continually at a disadvantage because their financial setup was never as good as the register they made. They had several reorganizations, and the company remained solvent, but there never was enough money to do things in a big way. By 1907 they had thousands of cash registers in service, and by this time they had attracted the attention of the great National Cash Register Co. of Dayton, Ohio. National acquired the Union company and incorporated many of the features of the Union Cash Register into its own product.

Biography of Frederick Fuller

Frederick Lincoln Fuller was born on 11 April 1861, in Norwich, Connecticut. He was the first son of Charles Chester Fuller (14 Sep 1832-15 Oct 1880), a mill owner, and Lucy May (Stead) Fuller (1 Nov 1834-1 May 1922). Frederick had an older sister—Mary L. (1857-1911), and a younger brother—Charles Owen (24 Dec 1867-31 Oct 1957).

Fuller family were heirs of the early settler John Fuller, born on 19 May 1617, in Chelmsford, England. John emigrated to Massachusetts Bay Colony in July 1635, together with his elder brother William. He worked as commissioner, farmer, and maltster, and died on 4 June 1666, in Ipswich, Massachusetts.

Frederick inherited the love of machinery from his grandfather Owen Stead (1804-1896), who was engaged in broom manufacture. He was only ten years old when he mastered the trick of making simple turnings on a small wood lathe.

Fred was nearly through high school when his father lost his mill during the Great Depression of the 1870s. The severity of this unexpected business calamity broke his health, and he died at the age of 48, after several years of illness. Fred was only 14 years old when his father’s breakdown threw the family with unbelievable abruptness into an entirely new way of life. His mother took in boarders, his sister found work as a school teacher, and Fred was obliged to hunt for a job that would enable him to contribute his bit toward the support of the family. Thus in 1875, he started to work at the Chelsea Paper Mills in Norwich as an office boy for 5 dollars a week. There Fred learned every phase of the paper-making trade.

In 1881 Frederick Fuller married 16 years old Rebecca Hamilton Bell (1865-1937), a partnership that lasted for fifty-six years. They had one daughter—Lucy May Fuller (1897–1929).

Soon after his wedding Fuller decided that the opportunities in the paper business were too limited to insure a comfortable future. He worked for 6 months in a brass foundry, but it was too much for his health. Then he ran a cloth stretching machine at a bleachery, before returning to the paper business and left again the paper business, to run a drill press in a boiler factory, where he had an accident and lost one of his fingers.

Although Fuller enjoyed the work in the boiler plant, his health showed no improvement. The doctors said he would have to have outdoor work before he could expect to become robust. And it was at this time that an opportunity presented itself for a job that was to keep him out of doors, in sun and rain, heat and cold, uphill and down dale, for more than two years. He was one of the first five men to don the uniform of a mail carrier in Norwich.

Fuller commenced his long career as an inventor in 1886 when he devised a device for registering and recording the time worked by employees and automatically computing their wages. The machine was patented in 1888 (US patent No. 379865). Fuller managed to convince a local businessman, Mr. Tillinghast, that his device is good enough to be put into production, and he provided money and a place where Fuller could make a real model. He was sent to Waterbury, Conn., the national center of manufacture of metal models, to carry on his work. Even a company had been formed to market the new machine, but when his main patron died, the project was abandoned, thus Fuller became again unemployed.

In 1888 Fuller was engaged in Specialty Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Conn, owned by the Griswold family. There he saw a cash register and decided to create a better one himself. Working together with George Griswold, son of the owner, he created and patented a very good cash register. They established Union Cash Register Co. to manufacture their machine, and the company existed until 1907, when it was acquired by the great National Cash Register Co. of Dayton, Ohio.

In 1909, Fuller was invited to join the National Cash Register Co. in the invention department. He worked for NCR for eight years, the last three years as the chief inventor. While in Dayton, Fuller made friends with the sales manager, Thomas J. Watson, the future chairman of IBM.

In 1917 Fuller left NCR, to accept the position of chief inventor in the cash register line in the Remington Arms Co. of Bridgeport, Conn. Fuller developed inside the stipulated time limit a register known as the Remington (see the nearby image), which was a success from the moment it was placed on the market.

In 1925, just fifty years after he had taken his first job in the paper mill in Norwich, Fuller made up his mind that a half-century of steady work had entitled him to spend the rest of his days in leisure. But complete retirement, after one has been as active as he had been all his life, is not the ideal state that is so fondly imagined. So, when in 1927 Thomas Watson invited him to join the inventions staff of IBM, he accepted his invitation with alacrity.

The main creature of Fuller in IBM was the 801 Bank Proof machine (patent No. 1946906 from 1934), which could list and separate checks, endorse them, and record totals. By replacing hand-written teller sheets, the 801 machine, as well as its successor, the 803 Proof Machine, dramatically improved the efficiency of the check-clearing process.

Frederick Fuller was a remarkable inventor. He was a holder of many patents for various devices and mechanisms, starting with the above-mentioned patent No. 379865 from 1888, for a device for registering and recording the time worked by employees and automatically computing their wages; then 2 patents for cash registers (No. No.420554 and 420555); 2 more patents for time recorders (431344 and 435582 from 1890); computing scale (580783); cash indicator (585467); 2 more patents for cash registers from 1897 (585468 and 585565); price scales (602658, 603503, 603504, and 603505); and many others.

Frederick Fuller kept his position at IBM until his death on 29 April 1943, at his home in Llewellyn Park, Essex County, New Jersey.

In December 1889, Lewis Hosea, a lawyer and amateur mechanic, and William Beardsley, a businessman, both from Cincinnati, Ohio, applied for a patent for one-column keyboard adding machine (suitable for adding one-digit numbers). The patent was granted on 3 March 1891 (US patent Nr. 447457). Besides the patent application, nothing is known about the device, so obviously it remained only on paper and had not been implemented in practice.

Let’s examine the adding machine of Hosea and Beardsley, using the patent drawing (see the drawing below).

The invention relates to registers or adding machines, its object is to produce a simple and compact hand instrument adapted to the use of bookkeepers, cashiers, etc., for ascertaining the footings of columns of figures without incurring the uncertainty and labor attending the mental operations of addition.

The invention consists in the apparatus, embodying, substantially, a bank of keys, placed in convenient relation to the thumb and digital fingers of a single hand, arranged to act selectively through transmitting and engaging mechanism upon a ribbon-drum, whereon is displayed a column of consecutive numbers, each of which in the due rotation is brought into view, registering with a sight-aperture provided in the casing.

The action of the device is as follows:
The operator having the machine on the desk before him with the ribbon indicating 0, traces up the units column of figures with the eye in successive order from top to bottom, or vice versa, striking the appropriate key for each figure. The action of each key brings down the ribbon in its appropriate number of increments, and the final reading will be the aggregated result. Suppose this to be 195. He writes down the 5 and proceeds to “carry” 19 as follows: Upon pressing the lever g and releasing the clutch F the reel tends to rotate the drum D and the ribbon back again to 0; but the present object is to stop the rotation at 19 (the carrying number) the operator controls the rotation by the lever k, in which a little practice ensures facility to stop at the desired point and set the clutch F. Should the ribbon slip past the desired point, say to 10, the reading is brought up to 19 by striking the 9-key or by applying a thumb-nut m to the projecting squared end of the shaft C, as indicated in Fig. 2, and rotating the shaft and drum to the desired point. The machine is thus set to the carried number, the addition of the tens-column is proceeded with in the same manner, carrying to the hundreds, and so on to the last column. The figures thus put down with the result of the last column constitutes the footing.

Biography of Lewis Hosea

Lewis Montgomery Hosea was born on 16 December 1842, in Montgomery, Alabama, to Robert Hosea (1811-1906), a Cincinnati businessman (a steamboat owner, Bank of Cincinnati director, and wholesale produce merchant), and Harriett (Moore) Hosea (1820-1875), a young painter. The couple had ten children: Harriett (b. 1838), Harrison (b. 1840), Lewis (b. 1842), Ella (b. 1845), Lucy (b. 1847), William (b. 1848), Hattie (b. 1851), Rupert (b. 1851), Raphael (b. 1856), and Joseph (b. 1859).

Hosea family belonged to the premier families in Cincinnati. They are of French Huguenot extraction, as their ancestors settled in the New World around the middle of 17^th century when Louis XIV gradually increased persecution of Huguenots and many of them emigrated. The first Robert (Abraham) Hosea (1675-1742), born in Virginia, established a family in North Carolina around 1700. Shortly prior to the American Revolution they removed to Boston, Massachusetts, where Robert Hosea (fifth) was born on 15 February 1811.

In 1816 Robert moved with his family to Chillicothe, Ohio. In 1826 he moved to Cincinnati, became involved in mercantile pursuits, but eventually joined his father here in a steamboat supply business. In 1835 he began working the steamboats in the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys until 1844 when he came back to Cincinnati. Starting as a steamboat clerk, he soon became a captain, then an owner, then an operator and manufacturer of steamboats. He built a substantial wholesale trade in Ohio and Mississippi River commerce and was by 1860 a man of substantial wealth, highly respected for his political acumen. A man of a variety of interests, Robert Hosea is elected to the State Legislature in 1857. In 1871 he became Mayor of Clifton, a town that he helped build. He died on 20 February 1906.

In December 1836, Robert Hosea married Harriett Newell Moore (then only 16 years old), of English ancestry, descended collaterally from Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780). Harriett was born in Chillicothe, Ohio, on 29 February 1820, as the eldest child of Joseph Thoits Moore (1796-1854), a portrait painter, and his first wife, Eleanor. Harriett became an artist and miniaturist, active in Cincinnati from 1837 to 1860, and she continued to take an active part in the art life of the city until her death there on 14 June 1875. In 1876, after the death of Harriett, Robert Hosea married Lucy Klinck Rice, a forty-one years younger (b. 8 Nov. 1852) woman, later the author of the novel Eastward, Or, A Buddhist Lover.

Lewis Hosea returned with his family to Clifton, Cincinnati, Ohio, when he was six months old and was raised there. He was educated in the public schools of Cincinnati—Hughes High School, Brooks Classical School, and entered Antioch College at Yellow Springs, Ohio, in 1858.

Lewis was still a student in the spring of 1861 when the American Civil War began. He left school in April 1861, to join the 6^th Ohio Volunteer Regiment known as the Guthrie Grays. Hosea saw action in some of the most famous and terrible battles of the Western Theater, including Shiloh, Stone’s River, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga. In April 1865, he was brevetted Major, U.S. Regular Army, for “gallant and meritorious services at the Battle of Selma and during the Atlanta Campaign.”

Hosea resigned from the military service in December 1865, and returned to Cincinnati. There he attended law school at the University of Cincinnati, which he graduated in 1868. He was admitted to the bar in Ohio the same year and commenced to practice as an attorney in Cincinnati. In 1870 Hosea was the assistant prosecuting attorney of Hamilton county. Then he founded a law firm in Cincinnati, served as a Superior Court Judge 1903-1909, and was a member of the Ohio Senate in the 75^th General Assembly. He was a Director of the Ohio Mechanical Institute there and was a founder of the School of Technology, which became the School of Engineering at the University of Cincinnati. He was also a trustee of Antioch College (1913-1924).

Lewis Hosea was a good mechanic and prolific inventor and served as consulting counsel for manufacturing firms and corporations. He was a holder of many US patents for various devices besides the adding machine: velocipede (US patent Nr. 228996 from 1880), molecular pivot balance (US352753 from 1886), friction brake for cable railway cars (US379015 from 1888), hydraulic valve (US423255 from 1890), elevator valve controlling mechanism (US430125), elevator (US479943 from 1892), railway joint (US517829 from 1894), screw press (US694861 from 1902), universal joint (US960327 from 1910), and others.

Lewis Hosea was a very active man and was involved in a wide range of organizations like the Cincinnati Society of Natural History, Ohio Mechanics Institute, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Literary Club, and the Symphony Club. He was a secretary of the treasury at the Miami Medical College and Commissioner of the Cincinnati Industrial Exposition. In the 1870s he was editor of the short-lived the Cincinnati Quarterly Journal of Science, in which in July 1875, he published a paper, “Atlantis: A Statement of the Atlantic Theory Respecting Aboriginal Civilization”, where he argued that Mayan and other early civilizations were derived from Atlantis.

In 1865 Lewis Hosea married Fanny Polk Smith (b. 13 Oct. 1840–d. 1 Jan. 1923) at Columbia, Tennessee. Fanny was a daughter of Rev. Franklin Gillette Smith (1797-1866), rector of an Episcopal School for Young Ladies, and Sarah Ann Davis Smith (1811-1871). They have had three daughters: Fanny Louise (b. 1866), Sara Davis (b. 1868), and Lida Cecilia (b. 1875).

Lewis Montgomery Hosea died 82 years old of bronchial pneumonia at his residence, 2430 Brookline avenue, Clifton, on 27 January 1924, and was buried in Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati. His house in Clifton, on the corner of Brookline and Hosea Avenues, is still preserved (see the upper photo).

Biography of William Beardsley

William Henry Beardsley was born on 13 November 1850, in Hamilton, Ohio. He was the 8^th generation heir of the early settler William Beardsley (1605-1661), a mason, one of the first settlers of Stratford, Connecticut, who brought his family (wife and three children, as after arriving in America, from 1636-1646 Beardsley and his wife had six more children) to America on the ship “Planter”, landing at Massachusetts in April 1635.

William was the son of Henry Beardsley (born on 17 April 1812 in Danbury, Fairfield County, Connecticut–died 30 Oct. 1888, in Hamilton, Ohio) and his second wife Laura O’Connor (died 1856). William had two sisters: Emma (1848-1885) and Abby Jane (1852-1916), and two half-brothers (from the third marriage of his father): Edward Moore (1858-1888), who became a physician in San Francisco, and George (1863-1895), a civil engineer.

Henry Beardsley learned the trade of a hatter, and came out to Ohio, settling there in Hamilton, in June 1836. He has followed manufacturing and dealing in hats, clothing, and straw goods. He married three times: first, in 1840 to Isabella Gibson, who died in 1846; second, in 1847 to Laura O’Connor, who died in 1856, and the last time in 1857 to Sarah C. Moore (1836–1899), a daughter of John Byers Moore, of Batavia, Clermont County, Ohio.

William Beardsley was educated in the public schools of his home town Hamilton, which was supplemented by attendance from 1867 at the Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio. Upon completion of his studies, he entered the employ of the Niles Tool Works at Hamilton, but subsequently engaged in the publishing business. Disposing of his interest in the printing business, in the early 1880s he engaged in school furniture (in the furniture business he worked together with James Edwin Campbell, an Ohio lawyer, who later served as the 38^th Governor of Ohio) and real slate blackboard business, in which he was quite successful.

Around 1890, his brother George, a civil engineer, removed from Hamilton to Phoenix, Arizona, and was there called upon to investigate the practicability of irrigating sixty thousand acres of arid land in Maricopa county. The survey demonstrated the feasibility of the undertaking, and George formed the Agua Fria Construction Company, with the financial help of his brother William and other Ohioans, to carry on the projected work of irrigation. In 1892, William Beardsley readily joined his brother in Arizona (unfortunately George died soon only 32 years old on 21 April 1895, and William continued the project alone as general manager). In 1892-1895 the company built Dyer Diversion Dam (initially known as Beardsley Dam), later they also built a canal, named the Beardsley Canal, from Lake Pleasant to ranches as far as 33 miles away (ironically the number of years William Beardsley devoted to the project). It was a mammoth undertaking, and the work was progressing slowly, but satisfactorily and, when completed in the 1920s, it rendered all of this vast tract of now arid land marketable, and a monument to Beardsleys energy and ability. William managed to sustain the project through bankruptcy, federal restrictions, and legal challenges while remaining seemingly untrammeled throughout the many years of frustration.

William Beardsley was a holder of several US patents: besides the abovementioned adding machine, he patented adjustable chair (US patent Nr. 294433 from 1884), and plaster (US639340 from 1899).

On 11 December 1888, William Beardsley married Ida R. Oglesby (10 April 1859–30 April 1901) from Middleton, Ohio, daughter of William B. Oglesby (1815-1885), a banker and former treasurer of Butler County, and Catherine Gingsick Oglesby (1830-1909). They had one child: Robert Oglesby Beardsley (born at Middletown, Ohio, in 1889). Robert studied engineering at Sheffield Scientific School of Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut, graduated in 1910, assisted his father in the Arizona project since 1911, and took the direction of the project after the death of his father in 1925.

William Henry Beardsley died after a four-month illness in Los Angeles, California, on 15 December 1925, and was buried in Woodside Cemetery, Middleton, Ohio.

William Lang was a businessman (founder of William Lang Company of Brooklyn, a manufacturer of metal goods) and prolific inventor from Brooklyn, New York. He patented a wide range of goods, including a windows shade pull, a speed indicator, a fife, a curtain-pole ring, a box fastener, a watch case, a coin-controlled vending apparatus, a pocket lighter, and a tuning-peg. Interestingly for us, among his patents, there is one for a simple adding machine (U.S. Patent No. 431365 from 1 July 1890.) The witness of Lang’s patent was John Alonzo Straley (1859-1907), a prominent New York lawyer.

The adding device of Lang (see the nearby image) was produced and distributed under the name Sales Register by the company of Edward John Hoadley (1848-1927), a businessman from Hartford, Conn, a manufacturer of specialties in confectionery and a holder of quite a few patents.

The Sales Register of Lang was a small tin and brass device with an overall measurement: 2.2 cm x 17.8 cm x 7.6 cm. The device has a tin case painted yellow and green on top and red around the edge. The top of the case has four wheels drawn on it, each of which has the digits from 1 to 9 drawn around the edge.

The digits go clockwise for the first and third circles (marked Cents and Dollars and counterclockwise for the second and fourth circles (marked Dimes and 10 Dollars). At the top of the circles, at the zero position, is a window that reveals a rotating disc below. The discs are rotated using thumbscrews that protrude from the back of the instrument (see them in the upper image). An arm on top of each circle points to a digit on the wheel. The discs advance when they are rotated in the direction of increasing digits and remain fixed when the arrows are moved back to zero.

The machine is a cheap and convenient adding device for store-keepers and others who have to add quickly small figures in filling the orders of their customers, being useful instruments in the hands of boys and girls who wait on customers and make up the bills for the same. As the entire device is made of sheet metal, it can be furnished at a very low price and is consequently within the reach of everyone requiring the assistance of such a machine.

Ezra Edgar Witter (1855-1939), a farmer from Milford Center, Ohio, was a holder of many (at least 15) US and Canadian patents between 1888 and 1920 for various (mostly agricultural) devices, for example, machines for making fences, a marker for corn planters, corn harvesters, lubricator, match safe, hinge, and others. Interestingly for us, one of the patents of Ezra Witter was for an adding machine (patent Nr. 423364 from 1890). On 22 May 1890, Witter received a Canadian patent (CA34392) for the same device.

The adding machine of Ezra Edgar Witter (see the nearby patent drawing from Nr. 423364) is a simple and small one-column keyboard adder (i.e. to be used for adding one-digit numbers), similar to the earlier device of Thomas Hill. The witnesses of the patent were George Leggate, a grain dealer and miller, and Joseph Culbertson, a prosperous local farmer.

Witter’s adder was designed as a cheap and portable device, provided with a series of keys that operate through a suitable mechanism upon counting wheels that register the amount added up. The invention has for its object the production of a device that may be carried in the pocket and differs from others in use in not being cumbersome and expensive. It has nine key-levers, placed in two vertical rows, the upper ends of which are screw-threaded and project through openings in the keyboard. The device has a pair of registering wheels: units-and-tens wheel, and hundreds-wheel. The tens-carry mechanism consists of a pin, a lever engaged by said pin and having a recess, a hook on the lever engaged by said pin below the recess, and a pawl actuated by the lever, substantially as set forth.

Biography of Ezra Witter

Ezra Edgar Witter was born on 18 February 1855, on the farm of his father in Union, Ohio. He was the baby of the family of Elijah Witter III (b. 27 Mar. 1807 in Geneva, Ontario, New York—died 8 Feb. 1886 in Milford Center, Ohio), a farmer and deacon of the local Baptist church in Milford Center, and Amy Ann Witter, nee Ballou (b. 1811 in Massachusetts–d. 27 March 1883 in Milford Center).

Elijah Martin Witter III (see the nearby portrait) (the son of Elijah Witter (1775–1837) and Eunice Barden Witter (1784–1864)) was a descendant 6^th generation of the early settler William Witter, who came to America in 1640 with his family and settled at Lynn, Mass. In 1829 Elijah Witter moved with a rifle in his hand and a pack on his back from his home in Ontario, New York, to Union, Ohio, where in 1830 he married Amy Ann Ballou, a daughter of Martin Ballou (1781-1869, a farmer) and Elizabeth (Betsey) Ballou, nee Lyon (1779-1851). Elijah was the owner of two farms in Ohio (500 acres in Union County and 600 acres in Madison County).

Elijah and Amy Witter had ten children—seven boys: Elijah Martin (1832-1890), Henry Harrison (1836-1913), Albert Barden (1840-1906), Alfred Amos (1843-1883), David William (1845-1848), Julius Marvin (1848-1856), and our hero Ezra Edgar (1855-1939), and three daughters: Lucy Ann (1831-1918), Eunice Betsey (b. 1834), and Maria Louisa (1851-1871).

In the middle 1870s, Ezra Witter studied classical studies at Denison University, Granville, Ohio (interestingly, at other times pupils of the same small college were some other inventors of calculating machines, like Orlando Lane Castle and George Stibitz).

After graduating from Denison University in the late 1870s, Ezra Edgar Witter returned to Milford Center and was engaged in his father’s farms. On 10 May 1880, Ezra Witter married Sarah Elizabeth Wolfe (b. 1 April 1854 in Union, OH—died 1920). They had two daughters: Leona Pauline (1880-1921), and Alva Betty (1882-1951), and two sons: Chester Warren Edison (1884-1975), and Guy M. (b. 1886).

The last decades of his life Ezra Witter spent in Lake County, Illinois, with the family of his daughter, Leona Dreyer (Witter). Ezra Edgar Witter died on 2 March 1939, in Zion, Lake County, Illinois, and was buried in the Lake Mound Cemetery, Zion.

John Pfeifer (1866-1939), а gifted machinist from Springfield, Ohio, was a remarkable inventor. He was a holder of more than sixty patents in the USA, Canada, and Europe, on calculating machines, cash registers, change makers, grave vaults, dictaphones, morgue tables, automatic curtain-hangers, signal devices, locks for automobiles, wrapping machines, automatic scales, and many others devices.

His first patent for an adding machine (US pat. No. 400359) the young engineer Pfeifer received on 26 March 1889 (see the nearby patent drawing), while working as a foreman in the tool department of Fay Watch Case Company, New York. It was for a 5-column keyboard adding machine (which can be used for adding 5-digit numbers).

Let’s examine the operation of the above-mentioned adding machine, using the patent drawing:
As each key is depressed the counting-wheel corresponding to the operating-lever of the said key is moved to a number of notches represented on said key. As each counting wheel is revolved the number of notches which it moves is registered at the opening f. When either counting-wheel moves 10 notches, the next succeeding counting-wheel and its indicating-wheel are moved one notch.

In adding a column of figures the key in the units-row corresponding to each figure in the units-column is depressed, and the result will be registered by the indicating-wheels through the openings f. The keys in the tens-row corresponding to each figure in the tens-column are then depressed with a similar result, the indicating-wheel of the units column remaining unchanged while the other indicating-wheels are moved corresponding to the numbers on the depressed keys.

The operation is continued for each column representing hundreds, thousands, etc., the result of any addition being disclosed by the indicating-wheels as they appear at the openings f above and in front of the keyboard.

In 1900, while in his home city, Springfield, Pfeifer organized a company for the manufacturing of a portable cash register, the so-called Champion Cash Register (see the nearby image), which was invented and patented by him in the late 1890s (US patents Nr.Nr. 579604 and 628961). Three years later he sold his interests to the Mast & Foos Company and joined this company in the capacity of superintendent of its cash-register department.

One of Pfeifer’s patents for adding machines (US Nr. 1663726, filed Dec. 1924) was put in production in the 1920s in the adder Little Giant (see the nearby image), manufactured by Kel-San Manufacturing Co. in Dayton, Ohio.

Little Giant was shaped like a cash register (quite similar to the earlier calculating devices of Jabez Burns and John Ballou) and featured a small wooden case with dimensions: 16 x 14 x 14 cm, and a weight of 1.4 kg. The resetting of the machine is cumbersome since each disc has to be set to zero individually from right to left and always triggers a carry. Obviously, the mechanism is extremely simple, but as the inventor himself stated in the patent application:
An object of the invention is to provide an adding machine so arranged that it can be very cheaply manufactured; a further and more specific object in this connection being to provide a machine, practically all the parts of which can be stamped from sheet metal and assembled without the necessity of machining, drilling or threading any of the parts.
A further object of the invention is to provide a simple form of transfer mechanism between the adding wheels.
A further object of the invention is to provide a very simple and cheaply constructed casing for the mechanism of the machine.

Biography of John Pfeifer

John Pfeifer was born in Springfield, Ohio, on 9 June 1866, the second son of Charles (1843-1895) and Elizabeth (1846-1920) Pfeifer (nee Berg). Charles (born as Karl August Pfeiffer in Gross-Gumpen, a village in the region of Hesse) and Elizabeth (Elisabeth) were Germans, who emigrated to the USA in 1864 together with their just-born son—Peter (b. 1863). Initially, they settled in Pennsylvania but then established their home at Springfield, Ohio, where were born their next children—John (1866-1939), Caroline (1868-1942), Elizabeth (1870), Margaret (1872), Adam (1875), and Ferdinand R. (Fred) (1877-1932).

In Springfield, Charles Pfeifer, who was a skilled blacksmith, entered the employ of the Mast & Foos Company, in the large machine-building plant of which he held a position as a foreman for many years, until his death in 1895.

John Pfeifer studied at the public schools of Springfield, and took courses in bookkeeping and mechanical drawing, under the direction of private instructors. In 1881, at the age of fifteen, he entered an apprenticeship in the tool-making department of the St. John Machine Company, at Springfield. Four years later he went to Cincinnati and entered the employ of the Eclipse Sewing Machine Company, but within a few months, he transferred his services to the Dueber Watch Works at Newport, Kentucky. In 1887 he took a position with the Fay Watch Case Company, at Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York, where he won his first assignment as a foreman in the tool department (just like his father).

In 1900 Pfeifer returned to Springfield and became foreman of the tool room of the St. John Sewing Machine Company, but two years later he went to Dayton and entered the employ of the famous National Cash Register Company of Patterson, in the tool department of the plant of which he spent the next five years. He then re-entered the employ of the St. John Sewing Machine Company, and a year later he returned to Dayton with the National Cash Register Company, for which company he thereafter did important research and experimental work.

On his return to Springfield Pfeifer organized a company for the manufacturing of the Champion Cash Register, which was invented and patented by him in the late 1890s, but three years later he sold these interests to the Mast & Foos Company and joined this corporation in the capacity of superintendent of its cash-register department. Two years later the company sold its cash-register business to the Toledo Computing Scales Company, and with the latter company, Pfeifer continued his connection for the ensuing nine months. From Toledo, he then returned to Springfield, and after being in charge of the tool room of the Foos Gas Engine Company for two years he became superintendent of the Standard Trimmer Company of this city. A year later he resumed his alliance with the Foos Gas Engine Company, as foreman of the tool room, and he was advanced to the office of general superintendent of the plant, a position which he retained for five years.

In July 1920, Pfeifer organized the Springfield Auto Lock Company, which developed an important industrial enterprise in the manufacturing of automatic automobile locks and other devices likewise invented and patented by him.

In 1889 John Pfeifer married Lillian (Lillie) Bauer (1865-1947), a daughter of Frederick and Margaret Bauer from Cincinnati, Ohio. The next year, 1890, in Dayton, Ohio, was born their only child—the daughter Hazel Margarite (1890-1972).

The remarkable inventor John Pfeifer died on 29 April 1939 in Springfield, Ohio, of heart ailment, and was buried in the local Ferncliff Cemetery.

Note: Biographical information for John Pfeifer was kindly provided by Tyler Elam, Assistant Archivist, Clark County Historical Society at the Heritage Center, 117 S. Fountain Avenue, Springfield, OH 45502

At the end of the 1880s the American businessman Willard Legrand Bundy (1845-1907), an owner of a jewelry store in Auburn, New York, devised the first electric cash-register in the world. The patent application was filed in September 1889 and the device was patented on 23 December 1890 (US patent No. 443475).

Willard Bundy was a businessman and inventor, who obtained patents on many mechanical devices but was mainly known for the invention in 1888 of a mechanical time clock, an early version of the time recorder (a mechanical device that recorded when workers clocked in and out of work), which was manufactured in a company of Bundy brothers (Willard had a younger brother—Harlow Elisha).

Let’s examine the mode of operation of the electric (in fact, battery-powered) cash register of Willard Bundy, using the patent drawing (see the lower image from US patent Nr. 443475).

The object of the invention was to provide electrically actuated cash drawers or registers designed for use in stores by cashiers, combining with it an adding machine to add the amounts each and every time a button or buttons are pressed to make up the sum placed in the drawer, at the same time to indicate and display the amount of each purchase on one or more dials, one dial indicating units, another tens, third hundreds or dollar-units, and so on.

Also to provide means by which two or more dials can be operated to indicate a large amount by actuating two or more buttons in succession; to release the drawer by the making of a circuit; to automatically throw the drawer open; to provide means to prevent the reopening of the drawer after being fully closed or to prevent its being reopened after being partly closed without the drawer is first fully closed and then reopened by the pressure upon a button; to provide a double-figure button operating to open the drawer by making a double contact successively and simultaneously operating the disk of units and the disk of tens; to provide means for registering each and every time the front of the case is opened, whereby access is obtained to the registering-dials; to ascertain the total amount taken in; to provide means by which the amount of each purchase is displayed upon the back of the apparatus to show the customer the registry when the back is toward him, and to actuate all of the several mechanisms by the electrical contact of any of the single or double buttons.

Willard Bundy (and the companies, associated with him) was also a holder of quite a few other patents in the area of cash registers and calculating machines. In 1891 he obtained a patent for card-printing attachment for cash registers (US patent Nr. 457766). He was also a holder of the following US patents: Nr. 1113099 and Nr. 1117200 for calculating machines; Nr. 617560 for Type Writing and Adding Machine. He had also patents in Austria (AT19424B and AT27631B), Germany (DE194212 and DE197451), France (FR331823 and FR360783), and Great Britain (GB190300409 and GB190516651).

Bundy Adding Machine (see the nearby image) was widely advertised in 1904-1906 (see the article in The Binghamton Press from September 1904) and was put in production by Bundy Mfg. Co. of Binghamton, NY, managed by Harlow E. Bundy. There was a great demand for the product, with steadily increasing sales that quickly exceeded production capacity at the Binghamton facility. An article headlined Brains That Do Not Tire in the national magazine World’s Work stated how this wonderful machine lightens the labor of the office worker, makes for efficiency and accuracy and proves an enormous saver of time, and claims that it is so simple is the operation and so lacking in complication… that a child can manipulate the machine. It simply cannot go wrong.

Biography of Willard Bundy

Willard Legrand Bundy was born on 8 December 1845, in Otego, New York. He was the first-born of Willard Douglas Bundy (9 Nov. 1815–22 Dec. 1889), and Elizabeth R. Bundy, née Gillespie (29 May 1817–2 April 1894). Willard Legrand had two brothers: J. Leland (Lee) (1847-1910) and Harlow Elisha (1856-1916), and a sister—Prudence Maria (1849-1924).

In 1849 the family moved to Auburn, Cayuga County, New York. In Auburn Willard Douglas Bundy entered the flour and feed business, then he opened a restaurant. About the time the Civil War broke out, he went into the grocery business and ran a grocery for seven years. Then he went into the fish, oyster, and general provision business, and was also interested in building.

After attending school in Auburn, Willard Legrand learned the trade in a jewelry store, and in 1868 he was able to start a business for himself, opening his own jewelry store.

In 1871 Willard Legrand Bundy married Esther Decatur “Etta” Sweet (12 Oct. 1851–10 Sep. 1931), the daughter of Royal and Margaret Sweet from Manlius, Onondaga County, New York. They had two sons: Willard Haywood (1872–1941) and Royal Douglas (1875-1940).

In the 1880s Willard Bundy built a wonderful 3100-piece clock, called Thousand Year Clock (see the nearby photo), to draw and entertain customers at his jewelry store. This clock is now at the Cayuga Museum in Auburn.

Willard Legrand Bundy was a prolific inventor, who obtained patents for many mechanical devices. His first patent from 1880 was for calendar-clock movement (US patent Nr. 225968). He was a holder of many patents for cash registers and calculating machines. However, the invention which made him famous, was his time recorder, a mechanical device that recorded when workers clocked in and out of work.

Willard Bundy devised his first time-recorder sometime in the mid-1880s. In 1887 he applied for a patent and it was granted in 1888 (US patent Nr. 393205). Next year, encouraged by his business-minded brother, Harlow Elisha, Willard entered into business with him, and on 30 September 1889, they founded the Bundy Manufacturing Recording Company of Binghamton, to manufacture Willard’s Workman’s Time Recorder invention (see one of the early Bundy Time Recorder in the nearby image).

The Bundy Manufacturing Co. begins with just eight employees and 150000 USD capital. The brothers needed investors, so several local businessmen, like Austin Ward Ford (an in-law of Harlow), and George Winthrop Fairchild (a six-term Republican U.S. Representative from New York), put some capital into the new company. Harlow was appointed as a general manager, while Willard served as a superintendent and was responsible for the technical part (patents and improvements to their time-recording clocks).

The Bundy Manufacturing Company was extremely successful and grew into one of the major industries in the Binghamton area, hiring over 140 skilled employees in the late 1890s, and establishing offices in principal cities all over the United States. In 1898 about 9000 Bundy Time Recorders were produced, advertised as solving “vexatious questions of recording employee time”. Harlow established accounts with the United States Post Office and the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad. Their time clock created an international revolution in the way that businesses managed their employees.

In 1900, Bundy Manufacturing Company merged with several other time recorder companies and became the International Time Recorder Company (ITR). In 1911, the ITR merged with the Tabulating Machine Co. of Hollerith and another company and incorporated in New York State as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, the forerunner of the world-famous IBM (International Business Machines Corporation).

Unfortunately, the tension between the two brothers Bundy began in 1900, when Willard’s elder son—Willard H., was discharged from the company for reasons that are unclear. In 1902, that same son, Willard H. Bundy, was granted a patent for a new time recorder design and incorporated a rival Bundy Time Recorder Company with his younger brother, Royal, and his mother, Esther Sweet.

Shortly thereafter, Harlow discharged Willard Legrand claiming he, and not his son, was the real inventor of the patent and thus violated his contract with the original Bundy company. Willard adamantly denied the allegations, claiming he had done nothing wrong, and, according to a local newspaper, going so far as to continue to go to work and expect to have his pay until his contract with the company expires, even if he has to collect it in the courts.

In 1903, Willard Legrand severed his connection with the initial Bundy company. His whole family moved to Syracuse, N.Y., with their respective families and started the production of the Bundy Time Recording Company. W. H. Bundy Recording Company, as the name was later changed, seemed to enjoy great success, at least at the beginning. It expanded beyond time recorders, manufacturing, and marketing an automatic calculating machine in 1904.

By 1906, the company perfected its Columbia Calculating Machine and began production. The machine added, subtracted, and multiplied, along with printing words of the figures according to individual requirements. Additionally, the company expanded that year, increasing its capital stock to 500000 USD and establishing branches in other cities. A local newspaper claimed Syracuse produced half the world’s time recorders at that time and recognized W. H. Bundy Recording Company as one of the major manufacturers of the area.

Meanwhile, the original Bundy Manufacturing Company continued to press numerous lawsuits against the new Bundy company. The two brothers and their respective companies engaged in several legal battles from 1903 to 1907 over patent rights regarding Bundy Time Recorders, violations of Willard L. Bundy’s contract with the original company, and the use of the Bundy name to sell Time Recording Clocks. In 1907, W. H. Bundy Recording Company was found guilty of infringing on the patents but continued to operate until 1915, refusing to be taken over by his rival.

Willard Legrand Bundy passed away of pneumonia in his home at 207 McClennan Avenue, Syracuse, N.Y, on 19 Jan. 1907, and was buried in Oakwood Cemetery. His invention forever impacted the workplace, and the concept of using the machine to clock in and out still exists in businesses all over the world.

Another American inventor with the common English name Webb, after Charles Webb, will be introduced in our humble site. Samuel J. Webb (1862-1909) was a businessman and prolific inventor from Minden, Louisiana. He invented more than 200 devices (for many of them he obtained patents), and the most popular of them was his cotton compress from the 1880s, which was advertised and sold as the largest and most powerful compress in the world.

The interesting for us invention of Webb is his keyboard one-column adding machine (i.e. suitable for adding columns of numbers), patented in November 1888 (US patent No. 392837). One-half of this patent (as well as of other patents of Webb) was assigned to Reuben Neil McKellar (1855-1933), one of the leading cotton manufacturers in the state and later mayor of Shreveport, LA, so we can guess that Webb invented this device by order from McKellar.

Let’s examine the so-called Adding and Subtracting Machine of Samuel Webb, using the drawing from US patent Nr. 392837 (see the nearby picture).

Looking at the adding and subtracting machine of Samuel Webb, it is apparent that by four disks shown in the patent drawing, a total of up to 9999 may be obtained. By a reference to Fig. 2 of the drawing, it will be seen that by pressing the push-rod D⁷ inwardly the rack-bar D⁴ is thrown out of operative position with its toothed collar B³, and the opposite rack-bar, D⁶, thrown into operative position with its toothed collar B². The machine in this position is adapted for addition. Now, taking the parts as indicated, suppose, for example, it is desired to add two to the total, nine hundred and nine. By pressing upon the units key-lever so as to cause the disk D’ to rotate backward two degrees the numeral 1 is brought to sight, thus making the total nine hundred and eleven.

As the disk turns, the L-shaped pin B⁵ will come in contact with and cause the spur E to turn, which in turn, will throw or rotate the tens or adjacent disk one step in a forward direction, or contrary to the direction in which the units-disk is rotated, bringing the numeral 1 of the tens-disk to the panel and making the total read nine hundred and eleven.

The machine can be used either for adding or subtracting by simple manipulation of the push-rod D⁷; or, if desired, the operator may omit the rack-bar D⁶ and the shifting mechanism described, or vice versa, thus adapting the machine for subtraction or addition.

Biography of Samuel Webb

Samuel Jackson Webb was born on 3 September 1862, in Homer, Louisiana. He was the first son of Dr. Stephen M. D. Webb (1826-1886), born in North Carolina, a distinguished and popular physician in this part of the state, and his wife Martha Carrie (Jackson) Webb (1839-1877), born in Alabama. Besides Samuel, the family had five more children: the girls Anna Moore (born 1860), Mary Love Ann (b. 1863), Carrie Atkins (1865-1963), Rose Walters (1868-1937), and the boy Robert Dickens (1867-1950).

Stephen Moore Dickins Webb, son of Samuel Smith Webb (1791–1861) and Ann Moore Dickins Webb (1798–1861), was related to some of the most prominent families of North Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi. He descended from the General Stephen Moore of the Revolutionary War era, was a nephew of the Dr. Robert Webb of Alabama, a first cousin of John Sharp Williams (a prominent American politician), and a cousin of Lucy Ware Webb Hayes, the wife of Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19^th President of the United States. After the early death of his wife Martha in 1877, Dr. Webb remarried Fanny Webb (1843-1893).

Samuel was educated in the local schools and always showed a creative mind and a knack for applying this creativity to practical inventions. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Webb spent much of his time after the invention of his famous steam-powered cotton compress in the east, in Pennsylvania, overseeing the manufacture of the machines. By the mid-1890s, the business was a booming concern and Webb brought other family members into the firm to help its operation, including his younger brother Robert, who earned a medical degree in 1892.

The Webb Press Company, chartered by the state of Louisiana in 1902, sold its devices to cotton producers in all parts of the US and abroad. Then Webb had turned his interests to the new field of oil and gas production when he died suddenly on 6 April 1909, in Minden, LA, of heart attack (apoplexy).

Samuel Webb never married and left his business to his brother and partner Robert Dickens Webb.

No doubt, there are many celebrities, mentioned on our humble site as inventors of calculating devices, let’s mention only Leonardo Da Vinci, Blaise Pascal, Gottfried Leibniz, and other not-so-illustrious men. It’s time now to tell the story of Karl Wilhelm Otto Lilienthal, the famous German pioneer of aviation, known as the Glider King, as he was the first person to make well-documented, repeated, successful flights with gliders.

Otto Lilienthal (1848-1896) was a holder of more than 25 patents in Germany, the USA, Austria, and Britain. Interestingly, only four of them relate to his passion—the flying machines (actually some refer to inventions by Otto’s brother Gustav, but are patented in Otto’s name). The rest being given (the first patent was from 1875 for calorimotorishe maschine) for, among other things, games, mining machines, boilers, steam engines, and a calculating device (rechenapparat).

Otto Lilienthal was a mechanical engineer by trade, who in 1883 established his own mechanical engineering company for boilers and steam engines in Berlin. The patent for the calculating device (German patent №44632, 8 April 1888) was probably driven by the needs of his workshop and can be used primarily for multiplying numbers.

The simple calculating device of Otto Lilienthal (see the nearby patent drawings from German patent №44632) is of the type Multiplizierscheibe (Multiplier Disc) and consists of two rotatable discs E and F, between the cover plate C and the bottom-plate D. The upper disc E contains a number of windows (openings) with the adjacent multiplicands, which are visible through the window L of the cover plate C. The lower disc F contains the multiplicands situated in such a way that, when a multiplier is visible through one of the holes of the disk E, the corresponding product appears just below the window K, provided in the upper part of the common cover plane C. There is a disk H for the insulation of the two discs against each other.

The mechanical engineer Jacob Henry Schnarrenberger of Springfield and Greenfield, Ohio, was a holder of quite a few (at least seven) US patents for calculating machines from 1888 until 1891 (most of the patents are assigned to Thomas Reynolds—Superintendent of the office of Sandusky and Cincinnati Railroad Co. in Springfield, but one of the patents was granted to Jacob Schnarrenberger and his younger brother John Fred, one third assigned to Christian Funk): (US391430, US409710, US418930, US439431, US422040, US422545, and US465732).

The first two patents of Jacob Schnarrenberger are for multi-column keyboard adding machines, as the second was an improvement upon the first (see the nearby patent drawing from US391430), similar to the machine of his compatriot William Burroughs.

In a January 1890 article in the newspaper Macon Beacon, (Macon, Miss.), the first calculating machine of Schnarrenberger was described as …a wonderful mechanical calculator… which performs addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, not only in whole and decimal fractions, but also in common fractions. The machine is twelve inches in length, eight inches in width and seven inches high, and weights but eight pounds. It is made of rubber and steel. The inventor claims that it is the first and only machine ever invented which will perform multiplication, division or square root by simple operation of keys. Addition is performed by touching a key bearing the number to be added, and standing in the proper column to order all the columns being added at one time…

Let’s give an example of the operation of the device, in which $101.04 is to be added to $95.00. The operator would strike key marked 4 at the extreme right hand, which would present 4 in the slot of the sight plate by moving the disk from 0 through four of the teeth G. 0 being the next figure, and there being no key designated or marked 0, he would not disturb the second disk to the left. In the third or hundreds order, he would strike the key marked 1, which would move the disk one space and present 1 instead of 0 in the slot.

The next figure being a 0, he would not disturb the fourth or thousands disk, for the above reason. The next figure being 1, he would strike the key marked 1 in the fifth order and move that disk one space, and present 1 in the slot. The figures would then read $101.01. Going on up the column in the example, he would observe 5.

The operator would then depress the key marked 5 in the third order, which would move the third disk five spaces, which, added to the one space already moved from 0, would present 6 in the slot. The next key to be depressed would be that marked 9 in the fourth order. This the operator would depress and move the fourth disk from 0 to 9. Thus $196.04, the sum of $101.04 and $95.00, is shown in the slot.

The next five patents of Schnarrenberger are for cash registers (although some of the cash registers are specified as adding and subtracting machines), on the second figure you can see the patent drawing from one of the patents (US pat. No. 422545). It is a combination of a registering mechanism with an indicating mechanism, the former involving the use of adding-disks and the latter that of rotatable indicating-wheels so arranged with an intermediate and operating mechanism that when the machine is actuated the amount of the purchase will be presented to view and such amount be shown by the adding-disks.

It seems Schnarrenberger’s design for cash register and indicator from his last patent (US pat. No. 465732) had been used in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries by firms associated with John Matthew Waddell (1853-1922), a manufacturer from Greenfield, Ohio, whose primary business was in the building of display cases and other business furniture, but he produced cash registers also (see nearby the Simple Cash Register of Waddell). This was the only practical implementation of Schnarrenberger’s massive efforts in the area of calculating devices, most probably ordered by his boss Thomas Reynolds, and other local businessmen.

Biography of Jacob Schnarrenberger

Jacob Henry Schnarrenberger was born on 12 January 1860 in Greenfield, Highland County, Ohio. He was the second child of Fred(e)rick Schnarrenberger (1834-1891), a German emigrant, and Sarah Jane Schnarrenberger, nee Geller (1832-1895), from Ohio. Fredrick Schnarrenberger was a farmer from Württemberg, Germany, who left Havre on the Ship Westmoreland and arrived in New York on 26 October 1854. In 1855 Fredrick Schnarrenberger established a farm in Madison Township, Highland County, Ohio, and in 1856 married Sarah Jane Geller. In 1857, their first child was born—a girl, Mary (1857-1939), followed by three boys: Jacob (b. 1860), John Fred (b. 1865), and Frank (b. 1878).

In 1880 US census records Jacob Schnarrenberger was specified as working in his father’s farm. In the early 1880s, he moved to Springfield, Ohio, and in the Springfield City Directory of 1889 Jacob Schnarrenberger and his brother John Fred were specified as living at 77 E. Liberty Str., Jacob working as a clerk at the superintendent’s office, while John was specified as a traveling agent. In the late 1880s, Jacob Schnarrenberger was employed as a draftsman in Superintendent Thomas Reynolds’ office of Sandusky and Cincinnati Railroad Co. in Springfield, that’s why his patents of this time are assigned (and witnessed by) one-half to Reynolds.

On 16 February 1882 Jacob married in Knox, Ohio, to Marilla Caroline Bevington (1860-1944) from Richland, Ohio. They had two children—Grace (Schnarrenberger) Valentine (1884-1964) and Spencer Salah (Schnarrenberger) Valentine (1885-1945). However, it seems in the late 1890s they divorced, because Marilla, Grace, and Spencer used the last name of Valentine (but not Schnarrenberger) from about 1900 onward. Interestingly, from some moment on, Jacob Schnarrenberger also changed his surname, and was known as “J. H. Snow”. Grace Valentine (see the nearby photo) became a good American actress, active on stage, screen, television, and radio from 1905 until the 1950s.

By 1891 Jacob Schnarrenberger returned for several years to Greenfield, Ohio, then moved to Indianapolis in 1895. There he founded a company—J. H. Snow and Co., and opened an office, first in the Cordova building and later in the Merchants National Bank building. Jacob Snow spent the rest of his life in Indianapolis, working as a patent attorney and engineering investment expert, and also as a designer, mechanical engineer, and manufacturer.

Besides the above-mentioned seven patents for calculating devices, Jacob (Schnarrenberger) Snow was a holder of quite a few other patents, for example: scoop-scale (US pat. No. 630942), cash-indicator (US675984), hydraulic motor (US689329), feed-trough for animals (US718287), burglar-alarm (US812892), door-stop (US1163478), barrel-support (US118701), etc.

Jacob Schnarrenberger died on 17 June 1934 at age 74 in Indianapolis, Marion, Indiana, and was buried in Greenfield Cemetery, Greenfield, Ohio.

Moore family from New York (Charles Carroll Moore (1827-1902), Jacob Bailey Moore (born 1829, a brother of Charles) and Frank Coddington Moore (1864-1929, a son of Charles), are holders of four (three US and one German) patents for calculating machines (Jacob Moore was a holder of another US patent from 1868 for window-shade fixture (Pat. No. 75446), and Charles Moore was a holder of a US patent from 1873 for a curtain-fixture (Pat. No. 145359).

The first calculating machine of the Moore brothers
The first patent for calculating machine, (US pat. No. 152670) from 30 June 1874, granted to Charles Moore and Jacob Moore, was for a simple Pascaline type adding machine (see the nearby patent drawing).

The machine is a simple five-positional adding device, nothing more than the earlier machines of Lepine and Hillerin de Boistissandeau. In using the machine, the instrument for turning wheels is inserted in the hole of the wheel D, opposite the digit of the scale e⁴ that represents the number to be added, and is moved around to the right until it strikes the stop. The units, tens, hundreds, etc., are added by turning the proper wheels. In turning either of the wheels D, as each ten of the column of figures being added is reached, the next wheel is turned one space, the carrying being thus done automatically.

The second calculating machine of the Moore brothers
The next calculating machine of the Moore family was patented on 5 June 1888 (see the nearby patent drawing). The US patent (US pat. No. 383973) was granted to Charles Moore, assignor to Jacob Moore. The same device was described in the German patent №47640, which was granted to Frank Coddington Moore, the son of Charles.

The second calculator of Moore is somewhat similar to the earlier Arithmetical Machine of Christian Ludwig Gersten.

Addition upon this machine may be commenced at either figure of the sum desired to be put on the machine. For example, to commence with 375, add 5 first by the units rack, 7 by the tens-rack, and 3 by the hundreds-rack, or, vice versa, add 3 first on the hundreds-rack, then 7 on the tens-rack, then 5 on the units-rack; or even add 7 on the ten-rack first, thus commencing anywhere, but with care that the figures are put on by their respective rack-namely, the units by the units-rack, the tens by the tens-rack, the hundreds by the hundreds-rack, the thousands by the thousands-rack, and so on indefinitely.

A special feature of this machine is that it has an “apparent carrying” and an “actual carrying”, principle, believed to be new in adding machines (although some kind of gradual carrying, was implemented in the earlier machines of Blaise Pascal and Pafnuty Chebyshev), in order to avoid the serious obstacle in these machines known and commonly termed as “the nine holes”—i.e., for example, to add 1 to 99999 to produce and show 100000.

The apparent carrying is when at the instant a 10 of any disk has arrived at an opening the plates G G’, etc., are moved downward automatically, covering said opening and concealing the figures therein by an apron, and at the same time locking the adjoining disk-rack. The actual carrying is when by the thumb-pin, or automatically by the revolution of the disk, the plates G G’, etc., are moved upward, lifting the apron from the opening to show the figures therein, unlocking the adjoining disk-rack, and by the pawl J now actually adding one to the adjoining left-hand numbering-disk. Between the downward and the upward movement of said plates G G’, etc., the actual carrying is thus interrupted by a period of rest, which may continue even to the instant before another one on the same disk is to be carried.

The third calculating machine of the Moore brothers
The third (and last) calculating machine of the Moore family was patented on 31 January 1899 (see the nearby patent drawing). The patent (US pat. No. 618427) was granted to Jacob Bailey Moore.

The third calculating machine of Moore consists of an automatically-carrying pointer (Fig. 1), and a device for performing addition or subtraction (Fig. 2).

This adding device of Moore consists of movable or sliding and numbered tapes or bands designed to perform a problem to be operated by the pointer which automatically registers and indicates the tens to be carried. The main frame has movable sections to be employed in performing examples in multiplication and division, said sections being spaced, numbered, and lettered. The provision for carrying is made in the automatic action of the handle or pointer by which the bands or tapes are moved.

Biography of the Moore brothers

There is some information about the Moore family, although it is scant concerning Charles Moore, who seems to be the main driving force behind the above-mentioned patents.

Charles Carroll Moore was born in Concord, New Hampshire, on 17 July 1827. He was the second son of Jacob Bailey Moore (see the nearby portrait), and Mary Adams Hill.

Jacob Bailey Moore (31 Oct 1797—1 Sep 1853), the son of the physician Jacob Bailey Moore (1772-1813), though without a college education, acquired considerable knowledge of classics and was noted for his love of reading, music, and mechanical ingenuity. In 1813, at the age of 16, having his father died, Moore apprenticed himself to Isaac Hill, the owner and editor of a newspaper at Concord (later Isaac Hill became US Senator and Governor of New Hampshire). He became Hill’s partner in 1819 and on 28 August 1820, he married Hill’s sister, Mary Adams Hill (b. 1800). In 1823 Hill and Moore dissolved the partnership, and Moore became a printer, bookseller, and publisher. From the 1830s he was sheriff of Merrimack County, editor of a newspaper in New York, chief clerk in the Post Office of Washington, D.C., librarian, and publisher in New York, and the first postmaster of San Francisco in 1849-1853.

Jacob Bailey and Mary Adams Moore had four (survived) sons and two daughters: George Henry, Charles Carroll, Jacob Bailey, Frank, Lucretia Ann (1821-1891), and Mary (b. 1833).

George Henry Moore (20 April 1823—5 May 1892), LL.D. from the University of New York, became an American historical writer and librarian.

Jacob Bailey (b. 1829) graduated from New York University in 1851, with high honors, and later, just like his father and brother George, was a librarian of the New York Historical Society.

Frank Moore (1828–1904) was an American journalist and writer, the author of quite a few books, among them The Rebellion Record, 12 volumes reporting on the American Civil War.

On 29 Jan 1861 in New York Charles Carroll Moore married Maria Haines Coddington (1836-1867). They had three children: Jacob Bailey (1861-1861), Mary Mathilda (1862-1925), and Frank Coddington (1864-1929).

Charles Carroll Moore passed away on 3 July 1902, in Savannah, Georgia.