Category: Timeline Stories

In 1878 one James Ritty, a 42 years old saloon keeper from Dayton, Ohio, was brooded so much over the peculations in his business, that he suffered a breakdown and decided to take a steamboat vacation trip to Europe. His business seemingly flourished, but he lost money, and he knew the reason—like every other retail business of the day that handled money over the counter, the only receptacle for receipts, save the pocket of the owner, was a cash drawer. It could be easily opened with the result that barmen were able to hold out as much cash as they desired. A constant turnover of barmen brought James Ritty no relief.

Having been trained as a mechanic, during the trip Ritty became interested in the machinery of the ship and made friends with the Chief Engineer. Soon he had the opportunity to examine the engine room, where he saw pistons and governors and drive shafts and steam gauges, but something else caught his eye—he became fascinated with the automatic mechanism, that recorded the revolutions of the ship’s propeller. Ritty thought: If a device could be made to count the revolutions, why not one to count transactions? There is a great field for a machine that can do this work.

From that inspired moment, amid the din and clash of the engine room, the idea of the cash register began to take shape in his mind. Ritty became so obsessed with his idea that he cut short his stay in Europe and returned to the USA.

Back in Dayton, James immediately tossed the question to his brother John. Two of James’ brothers (there were five brothers), Sebastian (1827-1891) and John (1834-1913), also were of an inventive turn of mind. The eldest brother, Sebastian, took out a number of patents on farm implements. John, who was a mechanic by trade, carried on the inventive tradition of the family. Among other things (like a wheel, railroad car coupling, etc.), he patented several machines for the hulling of green corn and set up a canning factory in which they were used.

Ritty brothers started their work in a small room on the second floor over the James’ cafe at 10 South Main Street, Dayton. In the middle of 1879, they already had a working model, but it was a total failure, being inaccurate. The cash register of Ritty was essentially a keyboard adder, and these types of machines were known in the USA and the world for decades, e.g. the machine of Caroline Winter from 1859. Like the machine of Winter, the first model of Ritty cash register (see the nearby image) looked like a clock with a keyboard. It had two rows of keys along the lower front, labeled with cents in five-cent increments from 5 to 95 cents and dollar amounts from 1 to $9, and had no cash drawer. Pressed down, each key represented the individual amount of money to be recorded. The sales were registered on a large dial, probably resembling the one on the ship, with two sets of numbers (the outer circle of numbers showed cents and the inner one dollars) around its circumference and two hands operated by the keys.

The second model wasn’t all that better. It resembled the first in all details with one exception—instead of adding disks the brothers designed a series of adding wheels mounted on the back of the machine.

The above-mentioned second model was patented on 4 November 1879 (see the lower patent drawing of US221360) as Cash Register and Indicator. It was the first US patent ever issued for a cash register. However, neither of these two models was put on the market.

Obviously dissatisfied with their first models, the Ritty brothers began a new line of development. In the third machine, called Ritty’s Incorruptible Cashier, instead of the dial type of indication they substituted a tablet form with pop-up numbers. The tablet indicators were small plates bearing the same money values engraved on the top of the keys, and were connected with the indicators by vertical sliding rods. As a key was depressed the indicator rod, resting on the key, was elevated until the indicator showed through a glass-covered opening in the upper part of the machine.

This seemed to be an important improvement because the amount of the sale was revealed to both cashier and client, thus providing increased protection for the merchant because it shed light on publicity on every transaction. There was still no cash drawer in the machine, and this model was also not sold to the public.

In their fourth machine, which came to be known as the paper roll machine (see the nearby image), Ritty mounted a paper roll horizontally above and across the keys inside the box. Each key carried a sharp pin, and when the key was depressed, it pinpricked a hole in the paper roll just above the key. At the same time, the paper roll would be advanced in one step. The result was that at the end of the day the owner could remove the roll of paper, tear the portion representing the daily sales, and count the holes in each column. If for example there were 100 holes in the 25-cent column at the end of the day, the merchant knew he had done $25 worth of business in 25-cent sales. Thus the register not only told the owner the exact amount of the day’s business, but also the total done in each price range. There was a bell to “ring up” sales.

The paper roll machine was the first to be put on sale, and several sales had been made to bar and cafe owners. Soon John Henry Patterson (1844–1922), an eccentric and aggressive businessman from Dayton, who was mainly in coal and railroad affairs, but also had a grocery and general store, bought a couple of the machines for his store. Before very long Patterson was to become the pioneer of cash register production and make his name synonymous with its development and distribution.

Let’s see how Patterson described why cash registers became a necessity for his business:
We were obliged to be away from the store most of the time so we employed a superintendent. At the end of three years, although we had sold annually about $50,000 worth of goods on which there was a large margin, we found ourselves worse off than nothing. We were in debt, and we could not account for it, because we lost nothing by bad debt and no goods had been stolen. But one day I found several bread tickets lying around loose, and discovered that our oldest clerk was favoring his friends by selling below the regular prices. Another day I noticed a certain credit customer buying groceries. At night, on looking over the blotter, I found that the clerk had forgotten to make any entry of it. This set me to thinking that the goods might often go out of the store in this way—without our ever getting a cent for them. One day we received a circular from someone in Dayton Ohio, advertising a machine which recorded money and sales in retail stores. The price was $ 100. We telegraphed for two of them, and when we saw them we were astonished at the cost. They were made mostly of wood, had no cash drawer, and were very crude (Ritty’s Incorruptible Cashier). But we put them in the store, and, in spite of their deficiencies, at the end of twelve months we cleared $6,000.

In late 1879 the Rittys established a small factory in Dayton to manufacture their cash registers (see the nearby photo). John Ritty was the foreman, and the factory staff numbered ten men. Since the first machines, that were launched to the market were largely constructed of wood, most of the employees were carpenters and cabinet makers, a trade which James Ritty had followed in the past (James Ritty had been a carpenter and a shingle maker before he opened his first saloon about 1868).

James Ritty launched the cash register business under the name of “James Ritty’s New Cash Register and Indicator”, but his company did not prosper. At the end of 1881, he became so overwhelmed with the responsibilities of running two businesses (he still conducted the cafe which demanded the major part of his time), that he and his brother John decided to sell all his interests in the cash register business, including the original patent to Jacob H. Eckert of Cincinnati, a glass and silverware salesman, for only $1000. In 1882, James Ritty, together with John Birch, a machinist, and brother-in-law of Jacob Eckert, applied for another patent for a cash register (US271363), assigned to Eckert. The new register had a drawer and a bell that rang when the key was depressed and the drawer opened. The indicator showed the customer the amount registered on the sale. The proprietor was assured that the amount registered was placed in the cash drawer, and that the proper record would be made by the adding mechanism. Publicity joined with protection in safeguarding receipts.

A new company was established to manufacture and sell the first mechanical cash register—National Manufacturing Company of Dayton, Ohio. Eckert soon realized that one man couldn’t do the job, from the standpoint of either time or money, and organized a stock company, capitalized at $10000, and sold something less than half the shares to four other men (between them John Patterson and his brother Frank), keeping controlling interest. John Patterson became the majority owner in 1884, and the company was renamed National Cash Register Company.

Despite the fact, that did not derive much benefit from his invention, James Ritty was not resentful and maintained the most friendly relations with John Patterson and his brother Frank, who many times invited Ritty to attend various NCR meetings and conferences and admitted his pioneering role.

Patterson formed the National Cash Register Company (NCR) into one of the first modern US companies, introducing new, aggressive sales methods and business techniques (although in 1912, the company was found guilty of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. and Patterson, Thomas J. Watson (the future president of IBM), and 26 other NCR managers were convicted for illegal anti-competitive sales practices and were sentenced to one year of imprisonment.) Patterson established the first sales training school in 1893 and introduced a comprehensive social welfare program for his factory workers. NCR had a glorious history and survived up to our time.

Biography of James Ritty

James Jacob Ritty was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on 29 October 1836, in the family of Leger (Ledger) Ritty (1792-1869) and Mary Ann Ritty (1800-1880). The family already had three boys: Sebastian (1827-1891), Peter (1831-1888), and John (1834-1913), and there will be another boy after James (Joseph, who was killed in an accident when still a youth), and a daughter (probably adopted) Louise (born 1853).

Leger and Mary Ann Ritty were emigrants from the German-French area of Alsace-Lorraine (they were from the German-speaking part). Leger was born on 1 April 1792, and in 1819 entered the army, where he served for 8 years. In 1828 Leger with his wife Mary and just-born son Sebastian and several friends emigrated to America, in order to seek a home in the new world. They settled initially for a year in Philadelphia, then in Pittsburg, where the family was reduced to poverty by Leger’s drunkenness and protracted sickness.

In 1833 Leger turned to God, refused to drink, and purged from his sins and diseases removed to Ohio (initially to Cincinnati), where he worked as a colporteur, and later built up a considerable practice as a botanic physician (known as “Dr” Ritty), or dispenser of herb drugs, for the rest of his life. Leger was a strong man, but on 21 May 1869, he became so depressed in spirits, complaining of asthma, erysipelas, and other diseases, that he shot himself through the heart with his large-sized Smith & Wesson revolver.

In 1840 Ritty family moved from Cincinnati to Dayton, Ohio, where James attended grade school and high school. He even went to medical college for a time, to study medicine, but with the American Civil War’s outbreak in early 1861, he left the college and enlisted in the Fourth Ohio Volunteer Cavalry as a first lieutenant. He served honorably for three years, leaving the Union Army in 1864, having attained the rank of captain.

After the army, James didn’t return to medicine (probably for financial reasons) but worked some time as a carpenter and a shingle maker (like his brothers John and Peter), and in 1868 he opened his first saloon at 5 Market St. in Dayton. In 1871 Ritty opened another restaurant and saloon, then a wine house and saloon, and then was a wholesale and retailer dealer in whiskies, wines, and cigars.

In 1877 he was already the owner of James R. Ritty’s Empire Saloon (In the same year, his brothers John and Peter opened their own restaurant and saloon not far from James’ Empire Saloon). It was about this time, according to legend, that to his head came a business problem, which will make him famous, creating the first cash register.

An open-minded and intelligent man, James (better known as “Jake”) Ritty was a good mixer and a man about town. He was of medium height, stocky build, with alert eyes and a drooping mustache, and was invariably well turned out, sporting an elegant silk hat.

James Ritty married in 1861 Susanna M. Norris (1844-1924) from Dayton.

In the early 1900s, James Ritty retired from the bar business. He died of heart trouble in his downtown Dayton Arcade residence on 29 March 1918 and was entombed with his wife Susanna and his brother John in his family vault at Dayton’s Woodland Cemetery (see the nearby image).

In 1877 Milton W. Hinkle of Memphis, Tennessee, invented a simple adding device, which he patented on 5 March 1878 (US patent No. 200911). The machine was somewhat similar to the earlier devices of his compatriots Jabez Burns, John Ballou, Joseph Harris, and Milton Jeffers. Only the patent model of the device survived to our time and is kept now in the collection of the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

The object of the invention is to furnish an improved machine for use in adding columns of figures and in keeping the tally of things to be counted, which shall be simple in construction and accurate in operation, and which may be operated very rapidly.

The patent model (see the nearby image) has wooden sides and a brass strip that covers the front, bottom, and back. The top of the instrument is curved at the front to the shape of two wheels that rotate inside it. A strip of wood between the wheels has the digits from 1 to 9 marked on it. Each wheel has the digits from 0 to 9 marked on it three times. A pin protrudes from the wheel between each digit, and each tenth pin is slightly longer than the others. The spacing of the digits is the same as that on the case. The large wheels are linked to two smaller toothed wheels at the back of the instrument. These smaller wheels are marked with the numbers from 0 to 13, and are meant to move forward every time the large wheel passes a longer “10” pin, recording numbers that should be carried. This very simple adding device even doesn’t have separate wheels for registering results.

The operator places his finger upon the pin of the wheel (marked B on the patent drawing) opposite the index-number representing the figure to be added, and turning the said wheel until his finger strikes the finger-plate, all the wheels being adjusted before beginning with their zeroes in the first place above the plates D E.

Almost nothing is known about the inventor of this adding device. Milton Washington Hinkle Jr. was born on 8 January 1848, in Carrollton, Carroll County, Kentucky. He was a son of Milton Washington Hinkle (born 1810) from Louisville, KY, a steamboat owner on the Ohio river.

In July 1878 William Patterson Borland, a native of Baltimore, who lived in Leavenworth, Kansas, and Herman Hoffman, a watchmaker in Leavenworth, patented a one-column key adder (see US patent No. 205993), similar to the earlier Adder of Marshall Cram and to the later Centigraph of Arthur Shattuck.

Besides the patent, nothing survived from this device, so obviously it remained only on paper and had not been implemented in practice. Let’s examine the mechanism of the device, using the patent drawing (see the nearby drawing).

The object of the invention is to furnish an improved machine which shall be so constructed as to enable the user to add up a column of figures quickly and accurately, and without it being necessary for him to look at the machine, so that no time may be lost in looking from his machine to the column of figures to be added, and which at the same time shall be simple in construction, accurate in operation, and may be used with great
rapidity.

The units and tens of the numbers added are indicated by the pointer (marked E on the patent drawing), and the hundreds are indicated by the pointer C’.

The levers O are raised into their normal position after being lowered by the operator by means of springs G’ attached to the base A, and which rest against the lower side of the levers O. As the levers O are raised by the springs G’ they strike against a pad, H’, of rubber or other suitable material, attached to a bar of the keyboard frame, so as to prevent any jar or noise when the said levers return to their places after being operated.

Biography of Borland and Hoffmann

Almost nothing is known about Herman A. Hoffmann, except that he was a local watchmaker in Leavenworth, a small town in Kansas, and died on 13 October 1889. However, for the other inventor—William Borland, there is some information.

William Patterson Borland was born on 27 February 1827 in Baltimore, to Thomas Borland and Catherine Ogle. Thomas Borland was a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian, who came to Baltimore from the north of Ireland about 1800 and was naturalized in 1805. He came to the USA after the death of his parents and was adopted by his mother’s brother, William Patterson, a super-cargo merchant of Baltimore, owning a line of sailing vessels and trading in the East Indies, dealing principally in tea, sugar, spices, and molasses. Thomas Borland later became a partner in the business, the firm being Patterson and Borland. Patterson Park in Baltimore was named for this William Patterson, but his chief claim to fame is that he was the father of Elizabeth, “Glorious Betsy”, who married Jerome Bonaparte.

In 1818 Thomas Borland married Catherine Hall Ogle of Cecile County, Maryland (Ogle family were early settlers of Maryland, and had in it several Revolutionary soldiers). They had two sons, Thomas Borland and William Patterson Borland.

Thomas died young, while William Patterson, our hero, worked as a merchant in Benton County, Lindsey Township, Missouri, in the early 1850s and married Elizabeth Hasson, also of Baltimore, in 1856. They moved to Warsaw, Missouri, where William served as a cashier at Mechanics Bank of St. Louis, Warsaw branch. In 1858 they moved again, this time to Leavenworth, Kansas (then it was a separate town, but now is part of the Kansas City metropolitan area), where they lived until 1880 when moved to Kansas City. They had five children—Thomas (1857-1892), Mary, Katharine, Elizabeth (1862-1941), and William Patterson Borland, Jr. (1867-1919) (who became a famous US Congressman from Missouri, see the nearby photo).

William Patterson Borland died on 29 October 1885 in Leavenworth, Kansas, and was buried at the local Mount Muncie Cemetery.

The William Hart’s story had many twists and turns. He was a watchmaker, jeweler, businessman, and prolific inventor. Hart had quite a few patents for various instruments and devices, but it seems these devices were never used. That’s not the case however with his calculator, known as Hart’s Mercantile Computing Machine, US patent No. 199289 from 15 January 1878 (the witnesses of Hart’s patent were Abraham Slingerland, a wealthy Kirksville lawyer, and Albert Dutcher, his partner in jewelry business).

The device was patented as a Calculator and Improvement in Mechanical Accountants, but was sold under the name Hart’s Mercantile Computing Machine (see the nearby photo). There are several of these calculators known to exist now. One of Hart’s calculators is on display in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (see the image below). According to a local newspaper, Kirksville Missouri Democrat for 16 July 1888, by then Hart had sold 3500 of these devices and he lately ordered one thousand more. Smithsonian’s calculator indicates Scovill Manufacturing of Waterbury, Connecticut, and a company by the name of J. W. Strange, Bangor, Maine, made it. Scovill was a maker of brass products, Strange was an instrument maker.

The calculator of Hart is similar to the earlier devices of his compatriots Amos Mendenhall, Alonzo Johnson, and Elmore Taylor. It is housed in a cylindrical wooden case (with cover), with a diameter 13.5 cm and height is 5.5 cm, its weight is 155 g. The instrument itself is made of steel and brass, and has a wooden handle.

The calculating device of Hart consists of three concentric brass discs, a brass marker, a steel stop, and a long wooden handle with a pointer coming down from its end, which rotates the upper disc over the lower one to add numbers up to 99. Each brass disc has the numbers from 0 to 99 stamped around the edge. The two inner discs both have a circle of 100 holes just outside the numbers. The inner holes are used to add the last two digits of a number by rotation. Any hundreds value in the sum carries to the second set of holes, which are used to add hundreds and thousands places. When the total exceeds 99, a hand like the shorthand of a watch automatically advances one to indicate the hundreds value (the adder has a single carry). Sums of up to 9999 can be indicated.

Biography of William Hart

William Henry Hart was born on 15 July 1828, in Lodi, a village in Seneca County, New York, United States. Until the Civil War Hart and his family lived in Dodge County, Wisconsin (Leroy, Williamstown, and Mayville). In 1867 Hart’s family moved to Kirksville, Missouri, where Hart became one of its prominent and most trusted businessmen, and opened a jewelry store in the square, doing business as W. Hart Jeweler. In 1874 Hart ran for City Council but lost. In 1875 he entered a partnership with Albert Dutcher, a local jeweler, and then sold his share of the firm to Dutcher. Because of declining health, Hart said that he wanted to take up something giving more outdoor exercise.

In 1850 William Hart married Elizabeth Davidson (1831-1894) from Pennsylvania. They had eight children: Emma Delilah (1851-1928), Rosalie (1853-1942), Henry (1855-1930), Sarah Sadie (1861-1924), twins Lawrence and Clarence (b. 1866), Volney (1872-1890) and Waren (1873-1877).

The 1880 Federal Census shows Hart’s occupation as a watchmaker. In 1886 Hart went back to the jewelry business in the firm of Hart & Miller, and then as the owner of Hart’s Jewelry Store. In December 1890, in a fire, which destroyed the store of Hart, his son Volney died, William Hart barely survived with a broken right leg and burns on the hands and face. By 1892, Hart was back in the jewelry business again, known now as Hart & Son, with his son Lawrence who later became an osteopath.

William Hart obviously was a very good mechanic and prolific inventor, because he had at least 13 patents for various instruments and devices, let’s mention only: second-hand holder and screw-end finisher (US patent 264532), graphophone-reproducers (US665601, US648406, US644981, US651308, and US817062), clock-escapements (US33990, US326292, and US106815), hammer for posting bills and cards (US217101), ruby-pin and pallet setter (US264533).

In 1884, William Hart (together with his wife) was one of the incorporators of the Spiritual and Liberal Association, which believed that certain spirits of a deceased manifested themselves and, in some instances, conversed with their friends on earth.

After the death of his wife on 27 January 1894, Hart continued his work and inventing, but eventually, he left Kirksville and USA and relocated to Mexico, where two of his children (Henry and Rose) lived. Hart remained in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico (a town, founded by a group of American utopian socialists), until his death on 2 April 1907.

On 5 November 1878, Reuben Rodney James (1826-1904), a farmer from Rising Sun, Indiana, took out a US Patent №209690 (see the patent of R. R. James) for a simple adding machine, similar to the earlier calculators of his compatriots Jabez Burns, John Ballou, Joseph Harris, and Milton Jeffers. It seems the device never went into production, and only the patent model survived to the present time (property of the Smithsonian National Museum).

The Reuben James’ adding machine (which he called Automatic Arithmeter) has simple and inexpensive construction. It is a wood, metal, cork, and paper device, with overall measurements: 21.5 cm x 20.2 cm x 20.2 cm.

The machine has eight-toothed revolving counting wheels, loosely mounted and rotating on a common axis. Around the periphery of each wheel, the digits from 0 to 9 are inscribed repeatedly. Attached to each cylinder is a toothed revolving disc. The device has a wooden case with a tin cover over the wheels. On the cover, next to each wheel, there is a slip of paper labeled with the numbers from 1 to 9. To enter a number, the operator places his finger at the tooth next to the digit on the appropriate paper slip and rotates forward to a stop on the fingerboard. The sum appears in slots or apertures in the metal cover, near the top of the machine.

Each counting wheel has four lateral inclines or cams linked to a weighted pawl-lever, to engage the next wheel on the left, so as to carry ten when the numbers added on the wheel on the right exceed ten.

Biography of Reuben Rodney James

Reuben Rodney James was born near Rising Sun, a small town along the Ohio River, in Ohio County, Indiana, United States, on 21 August 1826, to Henry James (1797-1880), a native of Maryland, and Rebecca Hatch Athern (1805-1834). Reuben was the first surviving child in the family, after Lucian Abram (b. 1824), who died as a baby, and before Ann Eliza (1829-1867), Rebecca Marian (b. 1831), and William (b. 1834). After the early death of his mother Rebecca in August 1834, his father married again to Amelia Maria Disney (1814-1872) and had four more children.

According to US Census records, Reuben James was a farmer (1850, 1860) and then a proprietor of a woolen mill (1870) in Rising Sun, Indiana.

Reuben James and his fellow Rising Sun resident Mirabeau Norman Lynn (1834-1893) took out a patent (US Patent №238122) for a grain meter in 1881.

In 1857 Reuben Rodney married Rebecca Moore (1832-1907) and they had six children: Harry (1858-1885), Carrie (b. 1860), Mary Mollie (b. 1863), George Henry (1869-1950), Nellie (b. 1873), and Fanny (b. 1874).

Reuben Rodney James passed away on 25 January 1904, in Rising Sun, Indiana, and was buried at the local Union Cemetery.

George Phineas Gordon (1810-1878) was a famous American inventor (with more than 50 patents on his name), printer, and businessman, who developed the basic design of the most common printing press ever, the Gordon Letterpress. At the end of his life, in the middle 1870s, he was obviously so wealthy, that decided to produce an adding device, to keep accounts of his money :-).

The adding machine of Gordon, similar to several earlier devices (like these of Henry House, Elmore Taylor, Calvin Holman, and others), has never been patented but it was in production in the late 1870s, although in small series (more than 30 devices were produced).

The adding device of Gordon is a stylus-operated circular adder with a capacity of up to 9999. It measures approximately 23 cm in diameter/2 cm thick, with a very early bakelite and thermoplastic base with a heavy nickel-plated top mechanism. The machine may be used on a desk or screwed to the wall.

Let’s see the operation of the device, using the directions, printed on the box (see the image below).

1. Place the adder so that the bar crossing the index ring will be at the right.

2. Place the pointer in the hole in the red on the outer ring and move the ring till the pointer is stopped by the LOWER PART of the bar. The figures 00 on the ring will then be seen at the opening. Then move the inner ring in the same way and the figures 00 on that ring will also be seen at the opening. The adder is now ready for use.

3. Place the pointer in the hole opposite any number you wish to add and move the ring as before. That number will appear at the opening. Do the same with the next chosen number and the SUM of the two numbers will appear, and so on to any extent from 1 to 10000.
The outer ring adds units and tens; the inner ring adds hundreds and thousands; or the outer adds cents and the inner adds dollars.
When the total is found, the hole in the red on the outer ring will be at a number which will be the balance of 100. If, for instance, the number on the outer ring is 47 at the opening, the hole in the red will be at 53, and shows the cents of the change to be given if the amount received has been one dollar.
Add the cents first. About three sums of cents can be taken at a glance. If needful, thus—24, 36, 19, and the like. The carrying being AUTOMATIC, the result is ALWAYS CORRECT if the right figures are moved.

Note: Always hold the pointer vertical.

Biography of George Phineas Gordon

George Phineas Gordon was born on 21 April 1810, in Salem, New Hampshire, where his family had lived for more than 150 years. He was the second son of the merchant Phineas Gordon (1781-1850), and Mary (White) Gordon (1780-1852). The family had seven children: Louisa, Mary, Cuthbert, George, Wealthy, Adeline (1820-1899), and Edward.

Phineas Gordon was the fifth-generation heir of the early settler Alexander Gordon (Gorthing) (1630-1697). Alexander was a young Scotsman, a soldier in the Scottish army of 1651, which came into England with the design to place King Charles II on the throne, but was captured at the Battle of Worcester, became a prisoner of war, and with several thousand of his countrymen, was held in a prison camp. In 1652 300 of these Scotch prisoners were selected for transportation to New England, where they would be sold to planters and mill owners, the usual terms prevailing as to price and length of service (six years). In New Hampshire, Alexander worked as a miller, planted and farmed, and raised his family.

George Phineas Gordon was educated in Salem, NH, and in Boston, Massachusetts, where the family lived in the 1820s. After leaving school George became an actor for a short time but failed to achieve a livelihood at this, in the early 1830s he moved to New York, where he became an apprentice printer.

Upon learning the trade, Gordon opened a job printing shop of his own, and around 1834 he began to experiment with press design. In the middle 1830s, he is recorded as inventing a speedy card press, but he got his first patent (US patent No. 7215) for a printing press (it was a job-press—a relatively small press, called also jobber) as late in March 1850, and manufactured it as the “Alligator”. It had many flaws, and was soon replaced by the “Yankee”, then by the “Turnover” (patented in August 1851), and then by the “Firefly”, which could produce 10000 printed cards an hour. In 1858 he introduced the successful “Franklin” press (Gordon was a spiritualist and claimed that Benjamin Franklin had revealed the basic design of the press to him in a dream, but actually the “Franklin” press was based on previous inventions), which has ever since been known as the Gordon Jobber.

The “Franklin” press (see the nearby image) was a strong, well-built, and easy-to-operate machine. It solved the problem of clam-shell presses (which previously had “snapped” and endangered pressmen’s fingers) by having the platen open on cams, so that it was flat and lagged for the pressman as he fed the sheet, before closing parallel to the type bed.

Gordon ultimately built more than 100 kinds of presses. Initially, his machines were made for him by outside machine shops. At the height of Gordon Jobber popularity, however, in the second half of the 1860s, he decided to begin manufacturing presses himself. Thus he established a workshop in Rhode Island, and in 1872 he built his own factory in Rahway, New Jersey (see the lower image), with a capacity of 600 presses a year. The factory closed down in 1909.

George Phineas Gordon was twice married. His first wife was Sarah Elizabeth Cornish (1824-1851). They married in 1846, and had a daughter, Mary Ann (b. Sep. 1847 in New York), but Sarah died only 26 years old, on 5 April 1851, in New York. Later Gordon married Lenor May (b. 1830 in Connecticut).

George Phineas Gordon died of disease of the heart, on 27 January 1878, at his residence on Freemason Street, Norfolk, Virginia, and was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn.

Gordon left a fortune that was estimated at almost a million dollars, a huge sum for the time. His will was known to exist, but it took his family twelve years to find it. His real legacy was a printing press that became almost universal in printing offices for more than a century.

In the early 1890s, the German civil engineer Heinrich Esser (1845–1906), who lived in Aachen, where he worked as a municipal police building inspector, invented as a hobby and in his spare time the mechanical calculating machine, which he later patented in Germany (patent №82965, 10 December 1892), and USA (patent No. 561099, 2 June 1896) (he took a vacation in June 1892 to register his invention at the imperial patent office in Berlin).

The Esser calculating machine is a four-species device, i.e. it is capable of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. Only one example of the machine survived to the present, and it is kept in the collection of the Arithmeum Museum in Bonn, Germany (see the nearby image).

Interestingly, the comparison of the patent and the exhibited in the Arithmeum machine shows that the latter is an older prototype, as several essential details of the patented machine are missing. The Esser machine in the Arithmeum does not have tens-carry in the revolution counter, which is necessary to be able to do abridged multiplication and division. Other missing features mark this machine out as an early model: the main crank has no rest position lock, and there is no bell to signal an overflow of the result mechanism. The inventor must also have envisaged the mass production of his machine, as it consists of modules that can easily be exchanged (which was absolutely unusual at the time), to meet the individual needs of customers concerning capacity. Let’s examine the Esser calculating machine, using the patent drawing (see the image below).

The Esser calculating machine comprises three indicators, which may be designated as “operating-indicator” (marked with A on the drawing), “product-indicator” (marked with C), and “quotient-indicator” (marked with B), because by setting a number as multiplier in the quotient-indicator and a number as multiplicand in the operating-indicator the product-indicator, after manipulating with the operating-indicator in one direction, shows or indicates the product of the multiplication, and, vice versa, by setting a number on the product-indicator as the dividend and a number in the operating-indicator as the divisor and manipulating the operating-indicator in a reverse direction the quotient-indicator will show or indicate the result of the division.

The main advantage of the Esser calculating machine over the other calculating machines of the time was during multiplication, when an abridged method may be employed by which considerable time and labor are saved. If a large number (say 33333) is to be multiplied, for instance, with the number 2479, the operation may be performed on this machine in the same manner as is employed on the other machines—i.e., the multiplication of two factors may be carried on in the usual way, in which the main shaft is to be turned 9+7+4+2=22 times (according to the digits of the multiplier). However, the Esser machine allows an abridged method to be employed, in which the main shaft is to be turned only 10 times. What a great improvement!

Biography of Heinrich Esser

Little is known about Heinrich Esser. He was born in Pingsheim in the Euskirchen district in 1845. After graduating from high school in Düren, Esser studied civil engineering in Berlin and at the Technische Hochschule Aachen, where he passed the construction manager examination in 1874. He was a government builder at the Royal Railway Directorate in Cologne and later a municipal police building inspector in Aachen, where he died in 1906.

The Dutch engineer Samuel Leendert Huizer (1842-1899) had quite a few patents from the 1890s for various machines, between them several patens for a keyboard-operated adding machine: Germany (pat. №67678, 9 Mar 1892, and №70750, 31 Jan 1893), Belgium (No. 97493, 8 Dec 1891), France (No. 222997, 15 Jul 1892), Switzerland (No. 5743, 2 Jan 1893), and USA (No. 515228, 20 Feb 1894). Although not implemented in practice, the adding machine of Huizer looks like a very well-designed and useful device, so it deserves our attention.

The adding machine of Huizer (see the nearby patent drawing) has for its object to effect the rapid and accurate addition of long columns of figures and to be a useful auxiliary for all those whose occupation obliges them to effect similar operations.

The number of vertical rods (c), connected to the wheels, may be augmented or diminished according as the machine is to be used for the addition of greater or smaller totals. In like manner the machine may be arranged for another system of numeration, than such as the decimal system, use being made for that purpose of wheels having corresponding numbers of teeth and a number of keys proportionate with the system employed. Thus for example for English money there must be eleven levers with keys and the first drum must bear the numbers 0 to 11, while the number of teeth of the according wheels must be in the proportion of ten to twelve. On the other hand, the third drum for marking the tens of shillings must invariably bear 0, 1, 0, 1.

Biography of Samuel Huizer

Samuel Leendert Huizer was born on 8 May 1842 in Zwijndrecht, a town in the western Netherlands. He was the second child of the bricklayer Pieter Huizer (7 Jun 1798-17 Apr 1863) and Bastiana Pieternella van de Koppel (19 May 1807-16 Mar 1875). Pieter and Bastiana married in May 1840 and had four children: Gerrit (b. 1841), Samuel Leendert (1842-1899), Antonetta Maria (1843-1870), and Adriana Elizabeth (1845-1912).

In 1869 Samuel Huizer was hired by the Dutch East India Company and was sent to Soerabaya, Java island, where he worked for almost 20 years mainly as chief engineer and captain of steamships.

At the end of 1880s, Samuel Huizer returned to the Netherlands and settled in Hague. The next 10 years he devoted to inventing and patenting many machines, as besides the above-mentioned adding devices, he got patents in different countries for machines like: Starting device for tram cars and other traction vehicles (CH3119), Means applicable for use in forming end-flanges on soft metal pipes (GB189816041), Starter for vehicles (CA36788), Apparatus for drying coffee (US483923), Apparatus for filling tubes with viscid or semi-fluid material (US578944), Clothesline for colonial products, such as coffee, cocoa, pepper, etc. (ES11532).

Samuel Huizer married to Trijntje Kramer (29 Oct 1847-4 Sep 1928). They had five children: Hendrik Douwe Pieter (1871-1952), Louise Wilhelmine (24 Dec 1873-14 Sep 1953), Antoinette Maria Gerardine (b. 15 Dec 1874), Nina Bastiana Petronella (24 May 1878-4 Dec 1940), and Samuel Leendert (28 Mar 1885-15 Mar 1938).

Samuel Leendert Huizer died on 27 March 1899 in Gravenhage.

The Moravian and Austrian economist František Čuhel (1862-1914) (known mainly under his Germanized name Franz Cuhel) obtained his doctorate in law in Prague (Univerzity Karlovy) in 1886 and became a trainee at the Chamber of Commerce in Prague. In 1887 he (together with his brother Heinrich) registered a Priorität for a patent for a simple calculating instrument, called Arithmet. The device was put into production at the end of the 19^th century by another Czech inventor—A. Fiedler.

Several years later Cuhel patented (German patents №59377 from 13 Aug 1890 and №63156 from 13 Oct 1891) much elaborated and interesting calculating device (although it had not been implemented in practice and had no importance in the development of calculating machine technology), which we will examine.

The calculator of Cuhel (see the nearby patent drawing) has eight places in the result mechanism and four places in the setting mechanism. It has thirty-six keys (nine keys repeated four times) in two long rows.

In the calculating mechanism of his machine, Cuhel used the so-called Schaltklinke (switching latch, or switching pawl, described first time by Jacob Leupold in 1727). Cuhel used a system of three-angle levers at every point on his machine instead of a simple switching latch. While these angle levers are rotating, they are pushed by a disk outside, change their position, engage a gear, take it along for a specified angle and then disengage again. The position of the disk that triggers this process and thus determines the active angle of rotation depends on the number set.

Biography of Franz Cuhel

František Čuhel Jr. was born on 12 November 1862, in the Moravian town of Olešnice. He was the first child of the evangelist family of František Čuhel Sr. (1834-1911), who came from the nearby village of Bolešín, and was a farmer and house owner, and Josefa Čuhlova (born Hájekova).

František and Josefa married in 1861 and had (at least) three children, after the eldest—František, they had two more boys: Heinrich, who assisted his older brother in his inventing activities; and Ludvik Rudolph (14 Jan 1875-31 Dec 1908), who emigrated to Iowa, USA, in 1892, and lived there until his death. Josefa Čuhlova died in 1895 and František Čuhel Sr. married Františka Jílková a year later.

František Čuhel Jr. attended gymnasium (grammar school) in Brno in the late 1870s and then the faculty of law at Vienna and Prague (Univerzita Karlova) Universities, where he earned his doctoral degree in 1886. In 1889 he became a clerk in the Prague Chamber of Commerce, was promoted to vice-secretary in 1894, and then to second secretary in 1898. In the 1890s, Cuhel also publicly worked on behalf of small businessmen. In 1896 he proposed and presented a plan for a “State Anniversary Fund of the Kaiser and King Franz Josef I” to support the community of small businessmen. The fund was established in 1898.

Due to health reasons (in the late nineties, he began to show symptoms of an unspecified mental disorder), Cuhel had to leave the Chamber of Commerce for early retirement in 1903. He returned to Olešnice and later moved to Vienna. His condition gradually improved. In Vienna, in 1908 he became an official of the “General Pension Insurance Company for Private Establishments”. During his life, Cuhel considered several times his habilitation in the field of the national economy at the University of Prague and his university career. According to his contemporaries’ accounts, Cuhel was of a “deep academic turn, highly gifted and educated man”.

It seems Cuhel was keen on technics, because besides the above-mentioned calculating devices, he invented several other machines, for example, in 1888 he (again together with his brother Heinrich) got a German patent №44042 for Cylinderdreschmaschine (a thresher, machine that separates grain from the plants).

Cuhel used to work as a journalist also, and has contributed articles to the magazines “Lawyer”, “Enlightenment”, “Horizon of National Economy” and “Voice of the Nation”, and edited the magazine “Nové Zprávy”. In 1907 he published his most important work, Zur Lehre von den Bedürfnissen (On the Theory of Needs).

František Čuhel died on 5 December 1914 in Vienna and was buried in Prague at the Šárka Cemetery.

At the end of the 1880s, Oswald Beher, a teacher in the Großguhrau district of Falkenberg in Upper Silesia, German Empire (now Góra, Opole Voivodeship, Poland), invented a keyboard adding machine, similar to the earlier device of Friedrich Arzberger. The device was patented in Germany in 1889 (see patent №50885 of 7 July 1889), Austria-Hungary (№22697, 13 May 1890), England (№13538, 21 Aug 1890), and in the USA (US494618, 4 Apr 1893).

The instrument maker Carl Gustav Pinzger (the owner from 1843 of mechanical workshop Pinzger in Breslau, founded in 1820 by his father Ernst Wilhelm Pinzger) made the first models in Breslau. On 15 September 1892, the company Frister & Rossmann in Berlin (a still-existing German manufacturer of sewing and embroidery systems) took over the execution of the machine. Until WWII a model of the device was kept in the collection of the Breslau School Museum, but it didn’t survive to our time.

Let’s examine the simple single-column adding machine of Oswald Beher, using the drawing of the German patent (see the nearby image).

In the improved machine horizontal crown wheel provided on its circumference with a series of numbers from 0 to 99 inclusive is adapted to be revolved by a spring when released by the depression of any one of a series of keys numbered from 1 to 9 inclusive. The depression of any one of these keys causes a finger to be thrust forward to engage with pins, the equivalent of teeth on the crown wheel so that the said finger is carried along with the crown wheel on its revolution and arrests the movement of the latter by arriving against a stop pin moved into its path by the respective key so that the amount of revolution allowed to the crown wheel is equivalent to the value of the key. A “hundred” wheel is also provided and operated, and means are provided for setting both wheels simultaneously to zero. The maximum sum in the result mechanism is 499.