Category: Timeline Stories

In June 1873, Solomon Pool of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, former professor and President of the University of North Carolina, at that time working as a principal of a school in Cary, NC, applied for a patent for a small and handy adding machine. The patent was granted on 23 September 1873 (US patent No. 143184) (see the lower image). Unfortunately, besides the patent application, nothing is known about the peculiar calculating machine of Solomon Pool, so obviously it remained only on paper, and even the patent model of the device didn’t survive (up to 1880, the US Patent Office required inventors to submit a model with their patent application).

Let’s examine the portable and handy calculating machine of Solomon Pool, using the patent application.

The adding machine of Solomon Pool was a small cylindrical adding device with numerical capacity of 999 (although Pool mentioned that a ring for thousands, or rings for any number which represents a power of ten, may be employed).

The input and zeroing of the device were made by rotating of the revolving (rotary) plate B, b, b’, which can be rotated in both directions. The revolving plate, confined between a stationary base and face-plate, and carrying a loose series of numbered concentric rings with a peculiar decimal trip, is moved by projecting pins on an exterior flange. The stationary face-plate is provided with suitable reading-openings, with a set of figures near the outer edge, and with two sets of engaging-dogs for each ring-one of them for bringing the rings all to zero at the radial window, and the other set for separately acting on the particular ring under operation.

The tens carry mechanism is implemented by means of a pawl, which catches a ratchet-tooth, and carries the motion to the next ring.

Biography of Solomon Pool

Solomon Pool was born on 21 April 1832 at Elmwood on the Pasquotank, the Pool plantation, located several miles SE from Gatesville, North Carolina. His father, also Solomon Pool (28 April 1787–10 Jan. 1832), was a wealthy slave-holding planter of English descent, from a family prominent in northeastern North Carolina since 1679 (first Pool, also named Solomon, emigrated from Middlesex to Pasquotank in the 1670s). His mother, Martha (Gaskins) Pool (10 November 1797–17 February 1838), was of French Huguenot ancestry.

The young Solomon was the last of seven children (5 boys and 2 girls) in the family. Unfortunately, his father died before his birth, and his mother died when he was only five. Young Solomon was raised on the plantation by his eldest brother, George Decatur Pool (1817-1879) (see the lower image), a farmer, philanthropist, and county commissioner, who became active in the Republican party. Besides George, Solomon had two brothers of note: John (1826–1884), a lawyer and U.S. senator, and William Gaskins (1829-1887), a physician.

Solomon prepared for college in Elizabeth City and entered the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1849 (his brother John graduated two years before). Solomon graduated in 1853, the second honor student in a class of 59. While at the University, he was a member of the Philanthropic Society. In December 1853 he became a tutor of mathematics at the University, and in 1856 he received an honorary alumni master’s degree. In 1861 Pool was promoted to adjunct professor of math and held the position for five years. In 1866 Pool took a leave of absence to accept a more lucrative position ($5,000 per year) as U.S. deputy appraiser in North Carolina, with the agreement that the floundering university would not be obligated to reemploy him until he was needed.

Although brought up within the realm of slavery, Pool rejected its basic ideas. When he reached his age of majority in 1853, slaves valued at several thousand dollars whom he had inherited, came under his control. To these, he offered their freedom, but they declined to accept it. He opposed the secession of the southern states, and during the entire Civil War was known as an outspoken Union man.

In 1869 Pool returned to the University of North Carolina to accept the presidency (he was permitted to keep his appraiser’s job at the same time). Reconstruction governor William W. Holden had taken charge of the university’s board of trustees to ensure that someone with the appropriate Republican affiliations would be chosen president. At thirty-seven, Pool seemed to fit their specifications and was hired as the fifth President of the University for $1,500 per year.

While Pool was president, the university continued its postwar deterioration. Buildings were neglected and overgrown, and campus trees were cut down for firewood. Pool incurred the wrath of many North Carolinians by, among other things, charging that the university was ruled too much by the landed eastern aristocracy and said that if no white students came to fill classes, he would enroll blacks.

In January 1871 Pool addressed alumni and friends of the university, pleading for money to pay off the university’s debts. However, it was too late—the trustees decided that the institution should close on 1 February 1871, and Pool’s title was taken away by a court order. He then became the principal of a small country school in Cary for three years, during this time he invented his adding machine.

Pool converted to the Methodist Episcopal church in Elizabeth City at age fourteen and became licensed to preach in 1856. He was ordained deacon at Raleigh in 1862 and elder at Fayetteville in 1865. He preached once a month at the college chapel while in Chapel Hill and was often called upon to preach in various North Carolina cities after he left the university. In 1885 Pool was received into the North Carolina Conference of the church and was sent to Smithfield. He was transferred frequently, filling in wherever he was needed, to towns such as Charlotte, Greensboro, Concord, and Camden.

Solomon Pool married Cornelia Kirkland (1840-1920) (the daughter of Joseph and Martha Kirkland), a native of Hillsboro, living in Chapel Hill, on 9 June 1856. The Pools had six sons and two daughters: Edward Irwing (1861-1944), Warren Doggett (1867-1938), Solomon Clifton (1869-1930), Joseph Eugene (1871–1938), Theodore August (1873–1933), Clarence Kirkland (1873–1950), Cornelia Mae (1876–1951), and Lillie Freshwater (1878–1965).

Reverend Solomon Pool was a short, stocky, curly-haired little man with a benign manner, soft voice, and pompous ways. On 2 September 1896, while ending a revival sermon at South Mills in Camden County, NC, Pool was stricken with paralysis. He recovered partially but remained in poor health and died five years later, on 8 April 1901, in Greensboro, NC.

Robjohn brothers, William and Thomas, from Devon, England, had both worked as organ builders in England before emigrating to the United States. First, in 1834, the younger brother, Thomas Robjohn (1809-1874), emigrated and started building pianos and organs. Then, in 1857, emigrated the elder brother, William Robjohn (1803–1878).

Robjohn brothers were very good organ builders and mechanics, either in wood or metal. But they were inventors also—Thomas Robjohn is a holder of quite a few US patents for musical instruments, inkstands, road rammers, sewing machines tools, fluting rollers, and others. William Robjohn also is a holder of several patents—for pine organs, a liquid meter, and, which is important for us as computer-geeks :-), for a “new and improved arithmometer” (US patent Nr. 130244 of 1872). Besides the patent application, nothing is known about the calculating machine of Robjohn, so obviously, it remained only on paper, and even the patent model of the device didn’t survive (up to 1880, the US Patent Office required inventors to submit a model with their patent application).

Let’s examine the elaborated calculating machine of William Robjohn, using its patent application, in which Robjohn claimed: This invention relates to a new adding machine, which is operated by means of numbered keys, and so arranged that mistakes cannot occur as long as the mechanism is in working order, as all keys are looked as long as any one is more or less depressed, and as the key depressed cannot be restored to its elevated position unless it has first been entirely pushed down. Errors that might arise from depressing some of the keys partly, and thus adding only fractions of the numbers which such keys represent, are thus entirely obviated, and rapid action, ensuring absolute accuracy, can be performed…

The machine of William Robjohn is a single-digit adding device (i.e., having the capacity for adding but one digital column at a time) and is the first key-driven calculator with a positive control.

In the illustration of the patent drawings of the machine, it can be noted that there are three sight openings in the casing through which the registration of the numeral wheels can be read. The numeral wheels are connected by devices for carrying the tens, one operating between the units and tens wheel and another between the tens and hundreds wheel.

The units wheel (disk C), shown in Figure 3 (picturing a vertical transverse section of the machine), is connected by gearing to a long pin-wheel rotor (marked E), so that any rotation of the rotor will give a like rotation to the units numeral wheel, to which it is entrained by gearing.

To each of the nine digital keys (marked B) is attached an engaging and disengaging sector gear device, which, as shown in Figure 3, although normally not in engagement with the rotor E, will, upon depression of its attached key, engage the rotor and turn it.

A stop device is supplied for the key action, which in turn was supposed to stop the gear action; that seems rather doubtful. However, an alternative device is shown in Figures 4 and 5 (picturing transverse sections, showing modifications of the key-locking mechanism), which provides what may without question be called a stop device to prevent over-rotation of the units wheel under direct key action.

It will be noted that the engaging and disengaging gear device is here shown in the form of a gear-toothed rack and that the key stem is provided with a projecting arm ending in a downwardly projecting tooth or detent, which may engage the rotor E, and stop it at the end of the downward key action. While the stopping of the rotor shows a control in the machine, which takes place under direct action from the keys to prevent the overthrow of the units numeral wheels, it didn’t prevent the overflow of the higher or tens wheel if a carry should take place. There was no provision for control of the numeral wheels under the action received from the carrying of the tens by the transfer mechanism.

Biography of William Robjohn

William Robjohn was born in Tavistock, Devon, England, on 14 February 1803, to Thomas Robjohn (cognomen also spelled Robjohns or Rabjohn) (born 1772 in Buddle Cottage, Devon-died 1835), and Jenny Ann Luxmore (b. 1775). William was the eldest child and had a brother, Thomas (born 24 Sep. 1809, in Tavistock–died 22 July 1874, in New York), and a sister, Mary Robjohns (Wonnacott).

William and then Thomas served their apprenticeship under famous London-based organ-maker John Gray and obviously were good apprentices because after the training (which usually lasted 7 years) they had been invited to work for his company Gray and Davison (one of Britain’s leading organ-makers between the 1790s and the 1880s). Thomas soon left to seek his fortune in America, and in 1834, settled in New York, where he built many organs of his own, supplementing his income working for other New York organ builders. William remained in England until 1857 (working as a foreman for Gray and Davison), when he and his family, at the insistence of his younger brother Thomas, also migrated to New York.

Between 1857 and 1863, the Robjohn brothers worked together in New York City and Elmira, New York, and built several organs characterized by splendid, carved casework, mechanical ingenuity, and forward-looking tonal design. Since 1863, they worked for the organ-builder company J.H. & C.S. Odell. Robjohn brothers were inventive folks, and each of them obtained several patents, as William’s most valued invention (patent No. 54063 on 8 May 1866) was one of the first completely adjustable pneumatic composition movements for the organ.

William Robjohn was married to Harriet Robjohn (b. 1820), and they had three sons: Thomas, William James (3 Nov. 1843-21 Nov. 1920), and Frederic Fall (1855-1867). William James Robjohn (see the nearby image) became a famous US musician and composer (in response to his family’s opposition to a career in music, he adopted the pseudonym Caryl Florio in 1870).

William Robjohn died on 29 April 1878 in New York.

In early 1875, as he lay seriously ill in his brother Edward’s home, Frederick “Fred” Warren oversaw the assembly of a calculating device, which he called “a machine that will astonish the world”. The so-called Warren Calculating Engine performed as its creator predicted it would, but his untimely death kept Fred Warren from astonishing the world with his invention.

Let’s return to the beginning of the story. In 1864, Frederick Parsons Warren (1839-1875), a young man of exceptional abilities from Three Oaks, then a soldier in the American Civil War, stumbled upon a very interesting article about the Difference Engine of Charles Babbage, а genius automatic mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions. Inspired by this article, he decided to create a calculating machine in his spare time.

Fred Warren definitely had the knowledge and skills to do this, as he was an educated, energetic and intelligent man, who used to work as a teacher, itinerant photographer, and watchmaker, but nevertheless, this hardship will take him more than ten years, and he managed to finish a reliable working model as late as in the spring of 1875, only several weeks before his early death of tuberculosis on 9 April 1875.

Following his death, his younger brother Edward Kirk Warren exhibited the device around Michigan and Indiana for a short time before his health began to deteriorate. Edward admitted the machine was so complex that after Fred’s death he was unable to utilize it to its fullest capabilities, and didn’t manage to perfect and market it. Edward will become later a famous American multi-millionaire industrialist, philanthropist, civic leader, and inventor (E. K. Warren is a holder of three US patents in the field of corsetry—№286749, №311621 and №559827, but he didn’t patent the so-called Warren Calculating Engine or Warren Bros. Calculating Engine).

Fred Warren had always been interested in machinery and sciences, so despite being only at age of 25, he definitely had some experience, when in 1864 he decided to build a machine capable of doing complex mathematical equations. From the very beginning, Warren stated he did not build the machine for manufacture or sale (that’s why the device had not been patented), “but to see what was possible to accomplish by mechanism.”

The Warren Calculating Engine (on the nearby image you can see a photo from the fall of 1875, picturing the last version of the machine and above it a portrait of the recently dead inventor at an exhibition in Chicago) is a mechanical arithmetical calculator that can add, subtract, multiply, divide, and calculate interest, with some of these operations able to be done simultaneously. It will divide one number by another, add the quotient to another number, subtract, or multiply, according to choice, at one operation. It runs backward as well as forwards, and will detect and show an error, was it possible for one to occur.

We don’t know how many examples of the machine Warren made, but three models of the device survived to our time. The first and second models appear incomplete and are kept now in the collections of the National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center, Washington, D.C., while the third seems a workable device and it is in the collections of the Michigan State University Museum, East Lansing, Michigan.

The first model (see the nearby image), finished by Warren in late 1872, is a brass, ferrous metal and paper-made device, with overall measurements: 12.5 cm x 28.5 cm x 19.2 cm. It has a row of 11 result dials that slide along the back. Each dial has a strip of paper numbered from 0 to 9 twice around the rim. Between the dials are spiral gears, which were to be part of the carry mechanism. In front of the dials and gears is a row of seven gear segments. In front of and linked to these are seven additional gear segments. A lever that extends to the front of the machine can be placed in any tooth of one of these forward segments. At the top of the machine is a tilted disc that has four toggles protruding from it.

In 1873 Fred devoted himself to his invention full-time, giving up his other work and social contacts. Fortunately, at this time his brother Edward, at that point a successful local merchant, stepped in to finance the research, although Warren brothers still did not envision the device as a potential business tool, but rather as entertainment.

The second version of Warren’s calculating machine (see the nearby image), was finished by Fred Warren in early 1874. It was a brass and ferrous metal-made device, with overall measurements: 18.2 cm x 66.3 cm x 30.2 cm. Across the front is a brass rod with ten large teeth, one shorter one, and a hollow brass cylinder. Between the teeth are ten levers that link to toothed segments at the back of the machine. The front and back are open; the sides are of ferrous metal painted black. At the top is a hollow brass rod, mounted across the machine, which has two brass circular structures on it. This is used as a plunger to activate the mechanism. Brass rods with large teeth extend from both sides of the back. There also is a ferrous piece in the shape of a large comb that is attached to the top back of the piece.

Fred Warren complained that the second version of his calculating machine was slow and got stuck when there were too many numbers to carry. He was eager to begin working on the third iteration, predicting that it would “astonish the world”, even as he acknowledged it had taken over his life: “I ought to get married and settle down, but this thing has got into my head…” Indeed, the third calculating machine of Warren (see the lower image), finished in early 1875, and kept now in the MSU Museum collections, looks like a genuine workable mechanical calculator.

The machine is bolted inside its original carrying case, a walnut cabinet with a glass window in the front (during the demonstration of the machine, the front window panel should be unlocked and removed.)

The device is made of nickel-plated iron or steel with brass knobs. The dials are silvered and illumined by a system of kerosene lamps. Through a slit, the numerals were reflected on a screen so an audience of several hundred people could easily see the calculations. The machine contains over 2100 specially formed pieces and over 3000 total pieces including screws and rivets. The Warrens hired a local farmhand, David Martin, to assemble those pieces at Fred’s direction, since he was already too weak to put them together himself.

Aside from the movable carriage that holds the number wheels, the rest of the machine was actually two identical units placed side by side that could be operated together or independently.

In early 1875 Fred Warren felt healthy enough to take the just finished third machine on the road for demonstrations in Niles, Michigan, and Morris, Illinois, as curious spectators could purchase a 10-cent ticket to see the machine at rest, but would need a 25-cent ticket to see it in action. Newspapers took notice of the Warren Calculating Engine, declaring it “the most intricate and complicated piece of mechanism ever constructed.” However, Fred’s health soon declined, and Edward grew increasingly concerned not only for his brother’s life, but also because only Fred truly understood how the machine works. Edward wrote several increasingly desperate letters to their brother, Albert, who had gone to California, and who was a good mechanic, imploring him to return to Three Oaks and became a full partner in the operation, but Albert declined.

After tuberculosis claimed Fred Warren on 9 April 1875, Edward continued his efforts to make the machine a success, declaring “I shall do all in my power to make it an honor to Fred and also profitable.” This proved to be an unfeasible task. Edward displayed the machine at least once more, renting a room at Chicago’s glamorous Palmer House Hotel in the fall of 1875, but was disappointed, as though there was a great interest in the device, few wanted to pay to see it. He also contacted the foremost American showman of the day, P. T. Barnum, hoping he might put the calculator before a mass audience, but Barnum did not show interest. The Studebaker brothers (carriage makers in Indiana) were impressed but said they are too busy and recommended Edward to approach bankers in New York and Boston, seeking an investor.

In 1876 George Grant, a Boston mechanical engineer and inventor of calculating machines, promised to display Warren’s machine beside his own at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, but later withdrew the offer, saying the organizers had reduced his display space. Edward was bitterly disappointed and despite the rave reviews of the machine in the popular press, at the end of 1876 he had given up, stating “I have not put any more time or money into it”. When he founded a local museum many years later, he included the third version of the machine in its collection. Though just a curiosity in a small museum, Fred Warren’s invention was not forgotten. In an October 1931 article in Business Machine Topics, Leslie Leland Locke (a famous historian and collector of calculating machines, who bought the models of the first two versions of Warren’s machine and later donated them to the Smithsonian Museum) stated that the machine “anticipated by two decades many of the developments in the art”, and “today there is not a single machine possessing all of the individual capacities of the Warren Calculating Engine”.

Biography of Frederick Warren

Frederick Parsons Warren was born on 30 March 1839 in Trumbull, Fairfield, Connecticut, in the family of Reverend Waters Warren (born 8 Oct 1801 in Ludlow, Vermont-died 30 Mar 1888 in Three Oaks Mich.) (see the nearby photo), who was a minister in the Congregational church, and Caroline Clarissa Parsons (1813-1893). Frederick has descended eight generations from an early American family—Jacob Warren (b. 1604) came to the colonies in 1635 from Weymouth, England. Frederick had an older brother, Charles Henry (1836-1859), and two younger brothers—Albert Larue (1842-1931) and Edward Kirk (1847-1919).

Fred Warren’s schooling has been limited to the public schools of Vermont, New York, and Massachusetts, where his father was holding pastorates in the 1840s and 1850s. Fred was a precocious boy, and as a teenager, growing up in Ludlow, Vermont, he became accomplished in the emerging field of photography, producing ambrotype portraits in ornate, gold-colored frames. In 1858, the Warren family settled south of Three Oaks, Michigan.

In the 1860s Fred Warren took part in the American Civil War (12^th Regiment of the Michigan Infantry), spending much of 1864 and 1865 at a supply depot in DeValls Bluff, Arkansas.

Upon his postwar return to Three Oaks, Fred borrowed money from an uncle and built a two-story building on the main street. He opened a jewelry store and a watch repair shop on the first floor, and a photography studio above. Fred Warren carried on an earnest campaign for numerous improvements in Three Oaks, and devoted considerable space to urging of new industries, such as a cheese factory, which would be of prime benefit to the farmers of the region.

Sadly, within a few years, Fred gave up photography, perhaps because the chemicals damaged his already-precarious health. He worked instead as a station agent on the Michigan Central Railroad and sold insurances, all the while continuing to work on his calculating machine design.

Frederick Warren was the editor of the Reveille, Three Oaks’ first newspaper, in which he demonstrated his originality and freshness of style. The publishing began on 5 October 1872. The Reveille, though successful in every way, was short-lived (only six issues had been printed). Its publication was suspended on 22 February 1873, when Fred Warren was forced to his bed by illness from which he never recovered, although he continued his work on the calculating machine.

The Warrens were an inventive family. In the late 1850s, after moving his family to Three Oaks, Fred’s father Waters Warren devised a circular beehive that fit inside a barrel (it was patented in 1863). Fred’s youngest brother—Edward Kirk Warren (7 April 1847–16 January 1919, see the nearby image), who made his calculating machine popular, was an American industrialist and inventor who developed featherbone, a popular alternative to whalebone in corsetry. He is the namesake of Warren Dunes State Park and Warren Woods State Park in Michigan, both of which he developed. He also founded Chamberlain Memorial Museum (later its contents were gifted to Michigan State College), including in its collection the Warren Calculating Engine. One of Edward’s sons (Frederick Parsons Warren (1887–1952)) was named after his brother.

Fred Warren looked seedy all his life, but in February 1873 he was bed-ridden by a serious disease. There was much sickness at this time, due to a severe epidemic of what was termed malaria, although it may have been influenza. It was a winter of many deaths, so many in fact, that the state census of 1874 revealed fewer people in the Three Oaks township than in 1870, despite the steady growth that had taken place in the number of farms and village homes. During this same time, the entire region felt the effects of sickness among horses, which points very definitely to have been a type of influenza.

In 1874 Fred’s health even worsened (he had bleeding lungs), probably due to the hard work on the machine. Edward thought the machine was killing his brother and in March 1875 he wrote “The Dr. seems to think that if he could have a chance to get his mind off the machine that he might live several years.”

Frederick Parsons Warren died of tuberculosis at the age of only thirty-six, on 9 April 1875, and was buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Three Oaks, Berrien County, Michigan, USA.

Emery Manville Hamilton (1838-1921) was a versatile engineer and inventor from New York with more than twenty patents (his first patent was issued in 1870 for a perspective diagram-sheet) in his name in various fields like telegraph, typewriter, time recording device, etc. One of his early inventions, an adding machine, Hamilton patented on 18 July 1871 (US patent No. 117169) (see the lower patent drawing).

The adding machine of Hamilton was announced in the section for more prominent patents of the August 1871 issue of the journal Scientific American (Volume 25, Number 06). Besides the patent application, nothing is known about the calculating instrument of Hamilton, so obviously it remained only on paper, and even the patent model of the device didn’t survive (up to 1880, the US Patent Office required inventors to submit a model with their patent application).

In the Scientific American Hamilton’s adding machine was announced as:
This is a combination of various devices whereby the operation of adding may be accomplished, the machine carrying and automatically registering the sum totals of the numbers set off upon it. We judge it will compare favorably with other competitors in the same field of Invention.

Hamilton’s adding machine consists of a large circular disk on a pivot in a rectangular case, having 100 notches and teeth in the periphery, which notches are correspondingly numbered on the margin of the upper side of the wheel. The operation is by means of a pencil, being placed in a notch opposite the number on projection of the bell-crank, which to be added to the number seen through the aperture, and the bell-crank being pushed inward thereby so that stud-pin is disengaged with it. Thus disk will be free to be turned by a spring, and it will move slide to the right until projection comes against the pencil resting in notch, when it and the disk will be arrested and, as the movement of the disk at the part having the numbers on it is the same as that of the slide, being the sum of the two addends.

Biography of Emery Hamilton

Emery Manville Hamilton was born on 22 January 1838 in Alfred, Allegany County, New York. He was the second child (of five) in the family of Horace Green Hamilton (15 Feb 1810-24 Mar 1896) and Catherine M. Burdick (26 Dec 1818-5 May 1896). Emery had an elder sister, Mary Lavantia (1836-1922), a younger brother, Arthur (1842-1862), and two younger sisters, Madelia (b. 1846) and Madeline Lucy (b. 1849).

Horace Green Hamilton (a family of Scotch descent, early settlers of Allegany County, N.Y.) was a farmer, carpenter, and builder, born in Brookfield, Madison Co., N.Y. On 25 Sep 1834, he married in Alfred, Allegany Co. to Catherine M. Burdick. In 1842, the family resolved to try his fortune in the West and emigrated to the territory of Wisconsin, settling in Rock County, purchasing a farm in the town of Lima, then a part of Milton. Besides the farm, Horace worked as a carpenter and joiner and filled various local offices, including that of Assessor, Deputy Provost Marshal, and Justice of the Peace.

In late April 1861, after the outbreak of the American Civil War, at the age of 23, Emery joined the United States Army as a volunteer, together with his brother Arthur. Unfortunately, Arthur was wounded to death at the battle of Antietam on 17 September 1862. Emery survived, and in 1863, he was promoted to major in the 1^st Regiment Engineers Corps d’Afrique. Hamilton would be known as “Major Hamilton of New York” for the rest of his life.

It is unknown what kind of education Emery Hamilton had, but in the US census of 1880, he was listed as a mining engineer, so most probably after the Civil War, he studied engineering and graduated around 1870. Evidence of Hamilton’s engineering work exists even today. One of the names for the Stony Pass trail in Colorado is Hamilton Pass. It is named after Major E.M. Hamilton, who built a wagon road along the route in 1872.

It seems Emery Hamilton was a brilliant engineer. Besides his calculating machine, he was a holder of over 20 patents in the US, Canada, and Great Britain for typewriters, telegraph equipment (sounder, transmitter, and receiver), perspective diagram-sheet, apparatus for recording measurements of time, piano-action, etc. His Hamilton Automatic (see the nearby image) is considered one of the masterpieces of 19th-century American typewriter manufacturing. The Automatic (the patent was applied for in 1884, and approximately three hundred of these charming typewriters were manufactured in the late 1880s) was the smallest typebar typewriter ever made and the first typewriter with proportional spacing. There is evidence of Hamilton working on other promising typewriter designs, none of which were formally marketed or have survived.

Emery Hamilton married Josephine Hamilton, they had no children.

Toward the end of his life, Hamilton lived in Flushing, New York, where he died at the age of 83 in 1921.

Henry Alonzo House (1840-1930) was an extremely prolific American inventor, who secured over 300 US and foreign patents for various machines. Interestingly, one of his early patents (US Patent No. 109619) from 29 November 1870 is for a calculating device. Besides the patent application, nothing is known about the calculating instrument of House, so obviously it remained only on paper, and even the patent model of the device didn’t survive (up to 1880, the US Patent Office required inventors to submit a model with their patent application).

The calculator of Henry House (see the patent drawings below) is a 4-positional simple column adder, made to improve portable or pocket calculating machines of the time, so that can be easily manipulated, and at the same time made very simple, accurate, and complete. The improvement of House in pocket register or calculator, which is composed of a series of concentric rings, numbered with digits in regular order from 0 to 9, consists in combining with the mechanism which will move the rings forward, a mechanism which will move them back again for commencing the calculation with any given number.

There are thirty characters on each one of the rings, and a corresponding number on the wheel G, so arranged that, when all the numbers on the rings representing the same value are opposite each other, these rings will be engaged with each other by the pawl x, and when the cipher on the wheel G is opposite either one of the corresponding marks on the ring J, the pawl z will engage the latter with the former; consequently, by turning the wheel G in the direction indicated by the arrow in fig. 1, three ciphers can be brought in line with each other opposite the opening i, through the front of the case.

There are thirty ratchet-teeth on the back of each one of the rings L J, so spaced that, when the rings are adjusted, as shown in fig. 1, their teeth will be in lines coinciding with the teeth on the back of wheel G.

The teeth on the ring L are acted upon by a spring-pawl, f, on a vibrating arm, D.

The teeth on the ring J are acted upon by a hooked spring-pawl, o, and the teeth on wheel G are acted upon by a hooked spring-pawl, o’.

Before using the instrument to calculate, the knob G’ is turned until the ciphers on the wheel G, the ring J, and ring L are brought in line opposite the slot i. The instrument is then held in the left hand: with the fingers of the left hand or right hand the arm D is vibrated, and its pointer c’ moved opposite of the required number marked on the face of the case, each time moving the arm back as far as it will go.

The first ring L will indicate the units column, the second ring J will indicate tens, and the third ring G will indicate hundreds and thousands.

By means of the wheel G, and its external knob G’, the rings can be quickly turned back to the ciphers, or to any required numbers.

Biography of Henry House

Henry Alonzo House was born on 23 April 1840, in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest son of Ezekiel Newton House (16 Nov 1806–1 June 1863) from Bellows Falls, Vermont, and his second wife Susannah House, nee King (22 Sep 1803–28 Nov 1862), from New York. Henry had an older sister, Harriet Hephzibah (1836-1905), and a brother, James Alvord (1838-1906).

At that time (the early 1840s) Ezekiel House (the eldest son of James House (1784-1869), a Pennsylvania farmer, and his first wife Hephzibah Newton (1786-1849)), an architect, builder, and painter from Vermont, was assisting his brother—Royal Earl House (1814–1895), the inventor of the first printing telegraph, to develop his remarkable machine.

In 1846 the House family moved to Little Meadows, Pennsylvania, where Ezekiel built a home on the side of a hill, known as the Castle. In 1852 the family removed again to the nearby Owego, New York, where there were better educational facilities. Here they lived in a house by the Susquehanna River, and Henry show his flair for inventing at an early age. He and his brother James (James will continue to assist Henry in his later inventions) built a boat, which they used to carry people up the river on excursions and also to transport goods down the river, thus earning money with which to pay their father for the material used to build the boat.

In early 1854 Ezekiel House had taken a contract to build a county courthouse in Rockford, IL, and left Owego. Henry and James soon followed him and started in business with their father. In 1857 Henry took a position with his father who was superintending the raising and reconstructing of the old city hall in Chicago, IL. In 1859, while working on a building in New York, Henry injured a muscle of his right hand severed by a chisel that dropped from a scaffold. During this enforced idleness of several months, he started his career as an inventor, designing and patenting an automatic gate (US patent No. 29696 from 1860).

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Henry was rejected as a volunteer because of his earlier injury, which had crippled his right hand, and he turned his attention to making another invention—a button-hole sewing machine. In 1862 Henry and his brother James Alvord designed an automatic buttonhole machine.

At the end of 1862, Henry returned to Little Meadows to marry on 24 November his cousin Mary Elizabeth House (26 Mar 1843-19 Sep 1917), daughter of William House, a miller, and Eliza Maria Turner. As Henry’s mother was very ill they hurried to Brooklyn where his mother Susan died on 28 November 1862, and his father Ezekiel followed her the next spring.

Then Henry House move to Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he was engaged by a company to implement the making of his buttonhole machine. His brother James joined him there and they soon perfected an attachment to be used on the family sewing machine.

In early 1866, Henry and James built a steam carriage for their own amusement and recreation. It carried seven people, including the driver and the fireman in the back seat. It developed 15 hp and could travel 30 mph on a good level road. It frightened so many horses and even men, so they did not use it long.

In 1869 House turned his attention to developing a machine that could knit various-sized goods (5 patents were issued to House from 1869 to 1872), and established the company Armstrong and House Manufacturing Co. to produce the new knitting machines. In 1873 he invented a bundling machine for kindling wood, and then a machine for dressing of fur skins.

At the end of the 1870s, House designed machines for paper bags and for drying paper dishes. In 1878, House invented and patented a machine for blocking felt hats and established the Compressed Paper Box Co of Bridgeport for this business.

In the early 1880s House designed machines fur picking and treating of pelts. In 1883, he organized a company to make seamless paper boxes. In 1885 House invented machinery for polishing metals. Then he turned his attention to telegraphs and telephones, making numerous inventions and improvements over his uncle’s Royal House devices.

Following a disastrous fire in March 1889, which partly destroyed his factory, Henry House and his son commenced a project to construct a 300 horsepower flying machine. During this time, many patents were issued to House.

In the early 1890s House turned his attention to building fast motor launches using kerosene oil as fuel. He formed a company—Liquid Fuel Engineering Co. (LIFU) and moved to the Isle of Wight, England. The company built high-speed launches for the Duke of St. Albans, Prince of Wales, the German Emperor, King of Belgium, Sir Thomas Lipton, and many other notables.

While living in England, Henry House became one of the first people in the country to be convicted of speeding. In 1899 he was fined, when he was behind the wheel of his LiFu (Liquid Fuel) steam wagonette. Police using stopwatches and standing at either end of a measured road clocked him doing 18 mph, a full eight miles an hour over the accepted safe speed. He ended up being prosecuted for furious driving and was fined £3, with 11 shillings costs. However, it was not the first time his passion for speed had gotten him into trouble. In 1891, he was fined 10 shillings after a witness reported him notching up 26 knots in a kerosene-fueled boat he was testing on the River Thames. These cases resulted in some free advertising for House’s designs and business. In 1897 House was appointed United States Vice and deputy-Consul at Southampton, and three years later returned to USA.

In 1915, House became associated with the Shredded Wheat Company at Niagara Falls and constructed an entirely new system for baking, handling, and packing biscuits. Several years later, the company erected a new factory to house the new automatic oven which Henry House had designed as part of the manufacturing process. It made an astonishing for the time 456000 biscuits every 24 hours.

Henry House had three sons—Henry (Harry) Alonzo House Jr. (27 Feb 1864-14 Feb 1939), William Newton (3 Jan 1871-3 Feb 1871), and William Ezekiel (23 Feb 1874-16 Oct 1878, who was accidentally shot and killed by his cousin, Alfred Bishop Beers, in October 1878, a great tragedy for the family), and three daughters—Kena C. (b. 1869), Grace (Libbie) Elizabeth (21 Nov 1875-20 Jan 1973), and Bertha Valena (5 Jun 1879-22 May 1959).

Henry Alonzo House, Jr. joined his father in his experimental work in the 1880s and in 1887 obtained his first patent (together with his father). Later he worked as a mechanical engineer in various companies.

Henry Alonzo House died aged 90, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on 18 December 1930.

The American businessman Gilbert Warren Chapin was a holder of three quite interesting patents for calculating machines—US patent №99533 and US patent №106999 from 1870, and US patent №646599 from 1900. The first and third patents are for key-operated adding devices, while the second is for a small adder with manually rotating numeral wheels. We know that in 1869 Chapin began to work at the financial department of the largest shoe jobbing concern in New York, keeping this position for 17 years, and later he worked as a bank actuary, so he definitely needed a calculating tool in his daily work.

At this time, there were quite a few key-operated calculating machines, invented in Europe (e.g. machines of James White, Luigi Torchi, and Jean-Baptiste Schwilgué), but there are also a number of patents issued in the United States on machines of this class, let’s mention only the devices of Dubois Parmelee from 1850, Thomas Hill from 1857, Leonard Nutz from 1858 and Caroline Winter from 1859. The first (and still more the third) adding device of Chapin had better construction compared to all of them, although not resolve a common problem for the early key-driven calculators—overthrowing the numeral wheels under a quick keystroke.

The first adding machine of Chapin
Let’s examine the first adding machine of Gilbert Chapin (patent application filled in July 1869, patent granted in February 1870), using the patent drawings (see the lower images).

The machine was designed to add two columns of digits at a time and with an attempt to provide means to shift the accumulator mechanism, or the numeral wheels and carry-transfer devices, so that columns of items having four places could be added by such a shift.

In Fig. 1 there are four wheels marked with V. These wheels, although showing no numerals, are, according to the specification, the numeral wheels of the machine.

The wheels are provided with a one-step ratchet device for transferring the tens, consisting of the spring frame and pawl shown in Fig. 3, which is operated by a pin in the lower wheel.

In Figure 1 the units and tens wheels are shown meshed with their driving gears. These gears are not numbered but are said to be fast to the shafts N and M, respectively (see Fig. 2).

Fast on the shaft M, is a series of nine ratchet-toothed gears (marked O), and a like series of gears P, are fast to the shaft N. Coacting with each of these ratchet-toothed gears is a ratchet-toothed rack F, pivoted at its lower end to a key lever H, and pressed forward into engagement with its ratchet gear by a spring G.

The key levers H, of which there are two sets, one set with the finger-pieces K and the other with the finger-piece J, are all pivoted on the block I, and held depressed at the rear by an elastic band L. The two sets of racks F, are each provided with a number of teeth arranged progressively from 1 to 9, the rack connected with the Nr. 1 key having 1 ratchet tooth, the Nr. 2 having 2 teeth, etc.

By this arrangement, the inventor expected to add the units and tens of a column of numerical items, and then by shifting the numeral wheels and their transfer devices, which are mounted on a frame, designed for this purpose, he expected to add up the hundreds and thousands of the same column of items.

The machine of Chapin, just like the similar machines of Parmelee and Hill, was made without a thought as to what would happen when a key was depressed with a quick stroke, as there was no provision for control of the numeral wheels against overthrow.

It is hardly conceivable that Chapin should have overlooked the necessity of gauging the throw of the racks F, but such is the fact, as no provision of such means is provided in the drawing, and neither was mentioned in the specification. Even a single tooth of the rack F, could, under a quick keystroke, overthrow the numeral wheels, and the same is true for the carry transfer mechanism.

The second adding machine of Chapin
The second adding machine of Chapin (patented in September 1870) is a much smaller and simpler device (see the patent drawing below) with manually rotating numeral wheels, similar to the earlier Addometer of Jabez Burns and Calculator of John Ballou.

According to the specification, this simple adding device has a simple, but reliable construction, missing the above-mentioned problem of the early key-driven calculators—overthrowing the numeral wheels under a quick keystroke, paying for this with its slower operation. Dimensions of the device are 20x15x15 cm, and capacity is 7 numeral wheels.

It seems at least several devices of this type (see the upper photo) have been manufactured by Gilbert Chapin.

The third adding machine of Chapin
The third adding machine of Chapin, patented in April 1900 (see the nearby patent drawing), was again a key-operated adder, this time with a portable and reliable construction (see the nearby patent drawing). Unfortunately, despite its sound design, it remained unnoticed in the world of mechanical calculators and no working model survived.

Chapin obviously noticed the main flaw of his first adding machine—no provision for control of the numeral wheels against overthrow, so he decided to address this flaw in the construction of his last calculator, stating:
In many of the devices of the prior art, the mechanism for transmitting the proper movements from the keys of the keyboard to the registering-dials is so complicated and so sensitive that in ordinary usage the machines soon become inaccurate, the registering-dials moving too far or too little to bring the character into proper position.
The object of my invention is to produce a device of this class in which many of the objectionable features tending to inaccuracy are eliminated, at the same time providing a machine simple in construction and operation and one which will operate positively, rapidly, and accurately; further, to provide mechanism by which the registering-dials will always be brought to a fixed and positive stop, allowing a substantially-uniform amount of depression to each of the several keys of the keyboard.

Biography of Gilbert Chapin

Gilbert Warren Chapin was born on 1 August 1847, in Springfield, Mass., to the typical New England Yankees Joel Chapin and Amelia Parsons. Joel Chapin (1815-1852), born on 16 August 1815, in Enfield, Conn., was the seventh generation heir of the glorious Samuel Chapin (1598–1675)—a prominent early settler, selectman, magistrate, and deacon of Springfield, Mass. (Actor Clint Eastwood is also a direct descendant of Deacon Samuel Chapin).

Joel Chapin was brought up on his family farm (he was the sixth son of Timothy and his second wife Susanna (Terry) Chapin) and received a good education in public schools and at Yale College. He was a ripe scholar, a good linguist, spoke several languages, author of a series of four grammars, and held a high place as an educator. He was the principal of Boys’ Schools in Springfield, Mass., Bridgeport, Trumbull, and other places in Connecticut. He studied for the ministry and was licensed to preach shortly before his early death on 27 August 1852, in Bridgeport.

Joel Chapin married Amelia Parsons (born 1 May 1818 in Enfield–died 22 Dec. 1882 in Brooklyn), daughter of Elisha (a farmer and leading citizen of town and church in Enfield, Connecticut) and Lovisa (Gleason) Parsons, on 1 September 1841, in Enfield. They had three sons: John Elliot (13 July 1842-3 May 1924), Joel Leander (30 Dec. 1843-20 July 1864, a remarkable boy, who volunteered during the Civil War and died only 20 y.o. as a prisoner of war), and Gilbert Warren.

Gilbert Warren received his education in the common schools and worked on the farm in his boyhood. When he was 18 years old he left home and began his business career as a clerk in a wholesale carpet establishment. Soon after he took a position clerk in a retail store carpet store and at the end of his third year in business accepted a position in the financial department of the largest shoe jobbing concern in Brooklyn, New York. Altogether he spent 17 years in the shoe business. He also gained some experience in the newspaper and insurance business.

Since 1889 Chapin has been in the Society for Savings of Hartford (the largest bank in New England) where his brother served as treasurer, and for many years has been its actuary and was in charge of the securities and accounts of the bank, representing various interests in the capacity of executor, conservator, trustee, etc.

Later Gilbert Chapin developed a real estate and rental business in Hartford and became a member of many societies and clubs.

Gilbert Chapin married on 22 October 1874, at Mansfield Center, Conn., to Delia Persis Campbell (4 Feb. 1849–31 Jan. 1902), his distant cousin and daughter of Herbert Barrows (a New York merchant) and Cynthia Selima (Storrs) Campbell (Storrs was a prominent Mansfield family, related to Chapin family). They had a child—Warren Storrs Chapin (see the nearby photo), born on 4 July 1885 in Brooklyn, New York (died 11 Feb. 1954). Delia passed away on 31 Jan. 1902 in Hartford, Conn. Later on 17 November 1909, Gilbert Chapin married Lucy Gould Stock (b. 9 Feb. 1873), the daughter of Thomas H. (1834-1903) and Louise M. (Griffin) Stock (1842-1900) from Springfield, Mass.

Besides the above-mentioned three patents for calculating machines, Gilbert Chapin is also a holder of two other patents—for bird-cage screen and for coupon cutter (pat. Nr. 454850).

Gilbert Warren Chapin died on 1 April 1932, in Hartford and was buried in Mansfield Center Cemetery, Conn., near his wife Delia.

In the late 1860s, Cathrinus Nikolay Arbo Collett, a young Norwegian civil (railway) engineer, at that time working as an assistant and later a chief of the investigations department of Norwegian State Railways in Kristiania (Oslo), devised a simple keyboard-adding machine with ten keys. It was one of the early European column adders, after the pioneering machines of James White, Luigi Torchi, Jean-Baptiste Schwilgué, Ernest-Narcisse Lobbé and Jacot des Combes.

The adding machine of Cathrinus Collett was patented in 1869 in France (patent number 86067 for Machine à additionner, from 16 June 1869, granted for 15 years), see the lower patent drawing. In April 1870, a patent application was entered at the British Patent Office in London (the application was communicated by the Swedish engineer and inventor Axel Petersson, who obviously knew Collett from his work in railways), but it seems it remained only provisional and British patent had not been granted.

There is not any other information about the adding machine of Cathrinus Collett, so most probably it remained only on paper and even a prototype had not been manufactured and demonstrated.

Biography of Cathrinus Collett

Cathrinus Nikolay (also spelled Nicolai or Nikolai) Arbo Collett was born on 30 March 1841 (baptized 22 August 1841 at the Modum Church), in Buskerud hovedgård—the manor of his family near Åmot in Modum municipality, Norway. He was the first child of John Collett (2 Sep 1807-13 Apr 1891), a Norwegian landowner, and Antoinette Johanne (Smith) Collett (15 Dec 1811-15 Oct 1874). John and Antoinette (see the lower paintings) married in March 1840 and had three children: two boys—Cathrinus (Nikolai Arbo), Albert (Peter Severin) (1842–1896), and a daughter—Karen (Elise Theodora) (1844–1926).

John Collett was a descendent of the famous Scandinavian (with branches in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden) family of English origin Collett (also spelled Collet), descended from English-born merchant James Collett (born 1655 in London, died 1727 in Kristiania), who settled in Kristiania in 1683. Antoinette was a daughter of Elias Elieson Smith (1788-1861), a Norwegian merchant, landlord, and politician, and his wife Karen (Von Cappelen) Smith (1789-1863), and grand-daughter of Caspar von Cappelen (1762-1823), a Norwegian merchant and landowner.

John Collett had agricultural education and managed successfully his family farm Buskerud. The property had originally been purchased by Peter Collett, John’s grandfather, in 1762, and had been handed down through his son Peter. Today the property is used as a vocational high school and the original farm buildings are still well maintained into the twenty-first century.

John Collett obviously wanted to provide good education to his children, thus Cathrinus enrolled at the Polytechnic in Hanover, Germany (Höhere Gewerbeschule/Polytechnische Schule) in 1859. He graduated in 1864 as a Civil Engineer.

After graduation Cathrinus worked for a couple of years as a surveyor at the building of the railway Ystad-Eslöf in Sweden in 1864-65. Then he returned to Germany, working as an officer at the Württemberg State Railways in 1865-67. Later on, he relocated for several years to Kristiania, working as an assistant and later a chief of the investigations department of Norwegian State Railways in Kristiania in 1867-72. During this period he devised his keyboard-adding device.

In 1872 Cathrinus moved to Sweden (in 1883 he was naturalized as a Swedish citizen), accepting the position of a station operator and then a district engineer during the building of the railway Stora Bergslagsbanans (from Falum to Goteborg). In 1880 he became a traffic chief (manager) at the railway company Nora-Karlskoga, keeping this position until his retirement in 1903, as the last 12 years he was elected head of the company’s board of directors.

Collett also participated in communal life of Nora, planning the device and building of the city’s water pipeline and building for that supply of electric power. He was also elected to the city’s finance committee, for which he served as rapporteur for some years and finally he served four years as landlord of this city.

On 28 December 1872, Cathrinus Collett married in Kristiania to Josephine Lucie Holmsen, born in that town on 27 October 1853, and a daughter of the merchant Hom Holmsen and Josephine Neislen. They had four children: Peter John James (1873-1914), Agnes (1875-1879), Karl Albert (1877-1939), and Alice Maria Sophia (1878-1960).

After his retirement in 1903, Collett has been living in various places in Sweden forests, in a villa near Saltsjøbaden in Stockholm, later at Engelhom in Skaane, and then again in Nora, where he built in 1910 a new villa in Solbacken.

Cathrinus Collett is considered to be the founder of the Swedish branch of the Collett family. He died on 12 April 1921 in Nora Stadsförsamling, Örebro, Sweden, and was buried in Nora Södra kyrkogård, Örebro. He was followed four years later by his wife Josephine, who died on 28 June 1925.

In the 1860s, Elizur Wright, an American mathematician, journalist, and abolitionist (living at the time in Medford, Massachusetts), sometimes described as the father of life insurance in the United States, invented a calculator, called Arithmeter (it was a large cylindrical slide rule, an equivalent of a linear slide rule some 20 meters long). He patented it in 1869 (US patent Nr. 93849), and sold it to insurance companies for $500. Wright also used the Arithmeter in his successful business for calculating the value of insurance policies, which he set up together with his youngest son Walter Channing.

Joseph Warren Fowle (1823-1880), a Boston machinist and inventor (holder of quite a few patents for various devices), is known to have built several arithmeters for Wright. At least ten machines survived to our time, one of them in the collection of the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. (see the image below).

The measurements of Wright’s Arithmeter are: 36 cm x 48.2 cm x 48.2 cm. It is made of brass, wood, paper, and ivory. The device has a wooden case (measurements: 41 cm x 52.8 cm x 52.8 cm) with two metal handles and a key.

The machine consists of two rotary adjacent cylindrical brass drums, each covered with paper and mounted horizontally in a round brass frame, which is screwed to the round wooden base. Two indentations in the side of the base assist with lifting the instrument. A crossbar attached to the frame extends across the length of the drums. Two arms (indicators) slide across a groove in the bar. A brass handle with an ivory knob on the right side of the frame rotates the drums. An ivory button on the left side of the frame operates a brake-shoe. When the button is locked in a vertical position, the two cylinders turn together. When the button is horizontal, only the right cylinder turns.

The two drums are marked identically. Each drum has a spiral of 20 turns around the cylindrical surface, divided according to the logarithmic scale upon spiral or helical lines, with printed numbers to the right of each division. The first digit of a number is read from the crossbar, and the remaining three are printed on the drum. The markings include every digit from 0 to 3000; every even digit from 3000 to 6000; and every other even digit from 6000 to 10000.

Biography of Elizur Wright

Elizur Wright III (his father and grandfather were also named Elizur Wright) was born on 12 February 1804, in South Canaan, Litchfield County, Connecticut, USA. He was the first child of the moderately prosperous and typical New England Yankees with strong Calvinistic background Elizur Wright (1762-1845) and his second wife Clarissa (Richards) Wright (1771-1843). Elizur Wright-father already had six children from his first marriage and will have four more children after Elizur (Clarissa, b. 1805; Martha, b. 1807; Lucy Mix, b. 1811; James Richards (1814-1897)).

Elizur Wright-father was a son of Elizur Wright (1718-1787), a sea captain and farmer in Canaan, Connecticut. He was a mathematician and Phi Beta Kappa Graduate from Yale, in 1781.

In the spring of 1810, the family moved from Canaan to Tallmage, Ohio, making the journey in a two-horse carriage with an ox-team to transport their household goods. Their progress was necessarily slow, and it was nearly six weeks before they reached Talmage, as it was generally necessary to camp at night by the way-side. This romantic journey, the building of their log-cabin, the clearing of the forest, and above all his solitary watches in the maple-orchard (where he might perhaps be attacked by wolves), made a deep poetic impression on young Elizur, and furnished him with a store of pleasant memories in the afterlife.

In Tallmadge Elizur Wright-father became a founder and teacher of the first Tallmadge High School in 1815, and later founded the Western Reserve College in 1826. He was a deacon of the Congregational Church and an abolitionist leader. Wright-father was also a major landowner and developer of coal.

After studying in the local primary school, the young Elizur Wright III entered Yale College in 1822. He helped to support himself during his college course not only by teaching in winter, but by making fires, waiting at tables, and ringing the recitation bell. In spite of these menial services, he was popular in his class and had a number of aristocratic friends. He was one of the best scholars in his class, first in mathematics, and so fluent in Greek that to the end of his life he could read it with ease.

Elizur Wright did not wait for graduation. In May 1826, the Groton Academy suddenly wanted a teacher, and he was invited to take the position. In his school at Groton was a pretty, dark-eyed girl named Susan Clark (1810-1875). Elizur Wright became interested in Miss Clark, and three years later, on 12 September 1829, they were married. Elizur and Susan Wright had ten children: John Seward (1832-1888), Charles Storrs (1837-1858), Mary Vashon (1838-1879), Ellen Martha (1839-), Lucy Jane (1842-1867), Kathleen (1844-), Winifred (1845-1873), Walter Channing (1846-1917), Ida Russell (1848-1936), and Anne Carroll (1852-1870).

Ill health came next in turn, a natural consequence of his severe life at Yale College. Wright was obliged to leave his school, and for an occupation, he circulated tracts for the American Congregational Society. Late in 1829, Wright moved with his young wife to Hudson, Ohio, to accept an appointment as a professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Western Reserve College. There he remained till 1833, strengthening himself in the repose of matrimony for the conflict that lay before him.

In December of 1833, the first national anti-slavery convention met in Philadelphia, and Elizur Wright was unanimously chosen secretary of it. After that he went to New York to edit a newspaper, the Anti-Slavery Reporter, remaining there until 1839.

In 1846, Elizur Wright established a newspaper, the Chronotype, in opposition to the Government policy, which he conducted until it was absorbed by the Commonwealth (1850), of which also he was for a time the editor.

Between 1853 and 1858, besides editing the newspaper Railroad Times, Elizur Wright gave his attention to invention and mechanics, constructing a spike-making machine, a water faucet (stop-cock), and an improvement in pipe coupling. He patented the last two (US patent Nr. 10082 and US patent Nr. 18116) and manufactured them for a short time. Later in the 1860s Wright devised and patented the abovementioned Arithmeter, a form of a cylindrical slide rule.

In 1852 an insurance broker placed an advertising booklet in his hand. Elizur Wright looked it over and perceived quickly enough that no company could undertake to do what this one pretended to and remain solvent. The booklet served him as an editorial, and he embarked on a successful crusade to reform the insurance industry. In 1853, Wright published his volume “Life Insurance Valuation Tables”.

Elizur Wright campaigned for valuation laws requiring life insurance companies to hold sufficient reserves to guarantee that benefits would be paid, and nonforfeiture laws requiring the companies to provide surrender values. He devised a new formula for finding the values of policies of various terms, known as the accumulation formula, and served as state commissioner of insurance for Massachusetts, from 1858 to 1866. In 1873, Wright also published another volume entitled The Politics and Mysteries of Life Insurance. In addition to his inventions and writing, he became a consulting actuary for various life-insurance companies in the Commonwealth.

Elizur Wright died of paralysis on 21 November 1885, in the midst of a rainstorm that lasted six days and nights in Medford. He lies interred at Mt. Hope Cemetery, Massachusetts.

On 23 June 1868, Charles Corliss (1827-1897), a farmer and landowner from Haverhill, Massachusetts, received two patents for instruments for adding and registering numbers (US patents Nr. 79209 and Nr. 79272). One of the patents is granted to Corliss and Nelson Spofford (1826-1906), a surveyor and inventor from Haverhill, who was a holder of quite a few other US patents for various devices, so we can easily imagine that Spofford was the mechanical genius behind the invention, while Corliss was the organizational force. Besides the patent applications, nothing is known about the calculating instrument of Corliss and Spofford, so obviously it remained only on paper (even the patent model of the device didn’t survive to the present time (up to 1880, the US Patent Office required inventors to submit a model with their patent application)). Similar small calculating instruments will be reinvented many times during the next several decades.

Let’s study the operation of the instrument of Corliss and Spofford, using the drawing of the patent US79272, shown below (strangely enough the second patent has a lower number—US79209 is the second patent, but not US79272, although both patents have the same date—23 June 1868).

The invention consists of a graduated sliding rot, confined within a casing, with one end projecting a short distance from the said casing, and at the other end connected with a system of gearing or watch-work, made to operate indicators upon a dial plate.

The operation of the instrument is as follows:
Let’s suppose a column of figures is to be added up; the instrument being grasped in the hand, the end of the bar b is placed at or near the figure to be added, each one in succession. The instrument is then pressed down, and the bar b is forced into the casing, until the end of the latter is coincident with the line or mark having the figure or number, corresponding with that at which the end of the bar is placed near; the same number is at once indicated on the dial k.
The instrument being raised, the bar b is projected by the spring d, when it is again pressed upon the next figure, and so the process continues, each figure or number being taken by the end of the bar, and the total amounts successively registered on the dials.
For instance, should the bar b be moved into the casing until the graduated line 3 is coincident with the end of the head c, the indicator l will point to the number 3 on the dial-plate k, and each successive number indicated on the graduated bar will be added to the amount, already indicated on the dials.
The graduations on the sliding bar may be omitted, and the said bar be made to act directly on the dial-plate, denoting the units, so that the figures to be added will correspond with those on the dial-plate.

The object of the second patent is to improve the first one, substituting a dial to indicate the numbers to be added in the place of the graduations marked on the sliding rod or bar in the first device. A further object is to provide a means for instantaneously resetting the instrument after registering any required amount.

Biography of Charles Corliss

Charles Corliss was born on 5 April 1827, in his family estate in Haverhill, Essex, Massachusetts. He was the first child in the family of not-so-young Ephraim Corliss (1782-1858, see the nearby photo) and Nancy (Carleton) Robinson (1790-1862). Ephraim Corliss (the son of Ephraim Corliss (1751-1824) and Lydia Ayer (1757-1805)) married Nancy Carleton (the widow of John Robinson and the daughter of Israel Carleton (1762-1836) and Abigail Whittier (1761-1825) from Haverhill) on 21 February 1826, in Haverhill. After Charles, the family had two daughters—Caroline (1829-1914) and Mary (1832-1913), and Nancy had a son, Edwin (1814-1881), from her first marriage.

Corliss family are descendants of the early settler George Corliss (1617-1686), born in Exeter, Devonshire, England. He came to America in 1639, and settled at Newbury, MA, but soon after he moved to Haverhill, MA, which began as a farming community of Puritans, where he resided until he died in 1686. George Corliss appears to have been an enterprising and industrious man, was made freeman, then elected Constable and Selectman of Haverhill, and founded a big farm, later known as “Poplar Lawn” (see the lower drawing and note the beautiful poplars near the fence), which has never been out of the possession of his direct descendants for the next 260 years.

Charles Corliss inherited Poplar Lawn (see the lower drawing from the 1860s) after the death of his father in 1858 (Charles was of the seventh generation from the original grantee) and lived there, taking care of the farm, containing about 50 acres, until he died in 1897.

Charles Corliss became one of the largest real estate owners in Haverhill, owned rare breeds of sheep, and was fond of carpentry. He built a new house at 33 Highland Avenue, Haverhill, and moved to it in 1881. Corliss had an excellent memory and found time for deep study of sciences was a keen student of the poetry of life (he could read from memory Scott’s long Scottish epic, The Lady of the Lake), and was an art critic. He designed a Merrimack Valley flag.

Charles Corliss had plans for cheaper transportation and was the president of the Haverhill and Lawrence Railroad, a company that had a project to build a railroad in Merrimack Valley, MA. In 1890 Corliss even announced in the local newspaper, that he laid out in his land in Bradford (Ward Hill) twenty-five lots of lands and will give, free of expense, if the railway is built within two years, to subscribers for the capital stock of Haverhill and Lawrence Railroad. Corliss planned to give the land free to purchasers who bought several shares. The stage had been set, but the state government had another plan—to build a trolley line in the valley. Corliss journeyed to Boston to speak before a legislative committee that was considering a proposal that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts spend $400,000 to establish the new railway. His words however were ignored and the trolley line became a reality. The great Haverhill and Lawrence Railroad finally went out of business.

Corliss and his associates also had plans to make Merrimack River navigable above Haverhill, building a lock and dam, and establishing a new city (called Buena Vista) on a hill near the river. They planned to use Mitchell Falls near Haverhill to provide power for Buena Vista and to build a brand new hotel, reasoned to attract tourists. The tourists, in turn, would fall in love with the great beauty of the place and rush out to buy land there. Houses, schools, and civic buildings would spring up. And industries would begin moving into the area which already had shoe factory. In no time at all, a thriving city would burst forth where once there had been only dense woodlands.

The beginning was promising. The pretty Buena Vista Hotel was built, but just before the opening, in April 1891, a spring storm of no mean proportions, a real cyclone, destroyed the brand-new hotel. Later Corliss rebuilt the hotel and it remained in business until torn down in 1910, but the stockholders and future investors lost interest and the project for Buena Vista city failed.

Charles Corliss was not in a hurry to marry, just like his father. He was 48 when on 6 October 1875 he married Celia Davis (Hatch) Bird (1830-1922) of Boston, Mass. They didn’t have children.

Charles Corliss died from heart disease in his residence on 18 February 1897 and was buried in Linwood Cemetery, Haverhill.

On 13 August 1867, Amos Mendenhall, a merchant and amateur mechanic from Cerro Gordo, Randolph County, Indiana, patented an improved calculating machine (US patent Nr. 67786). The patent model of the device (up to 1880, the US Patent Office required inventors to submit a model with their patent application) is still preserved in the National Museum of American History, Washington, D. C. (see the nearby image).

The so-called practical calculator of Amos Mendenhall was described by the inventor himself as a machine by which figures of any desired magnitude may be readily added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided. It is made of brass and is placed in a square metal box with overall measurements of 5.4 cm x 13 cm x 13.8 cm (although Mendenhall stated that the device is not limited to a particular size or shape, and may be made of wood, cardboard, or any other suitable material). The box has a boss in the center inside, in which the shaft of a cylinder with a graduated plate is to turn.

The practical calculator of Amos Mendenhall is an adder with a brass box that has a rotating disc inset on the top. There are 100 small holes around the rim of the disc. Outside the disc, on the top of the box, is a circular ring numbered from 01 to 99, with a gap at 00. Outside of this are three rings of holes, with 100 holes in each ring. These holes are to be used to hold markers indicating digits carried when the disc makes full rotations.

On the side of the box is placed a rotating multiplication table (see the nearby image).

Amos Mendenhall proposed two methods for recording numbers over 99. The first was a set of 9 holes around the edge of the fixed disc, into which the operator could place a pin. Whenever the rotating disc moved a full turn, the operator moved the pin up to the next hundreds digit. Mendenhall suggested a mechanism that would count the number of times the upper plate rotated, and hence give the hundreds place. If the operator rotated especially energetically and arrived at higher numbers, he suggested a system of pins to be used to represent thousands and higher places.

Biography of Amos Mendenhall

Mendenhall family were descendants of the early settler John Mendenhall (1659-1743) from Wiltshire, England, who came to America in the early 1680s and settled in Chester County, Pennsylvania.

Amos Cowgill Mendenhall was born on 16 November 1828, in Clinton County, Ohio, to Hiram Mendenhall (20 Feb. 1801-30 Jun. 1852) and Martha Ann Hale (23 Jun. 1801-5 Aug. 1880). He was named after his uncle Amos Cowgill (1794-1856), who married Hiram’s sister Edith (1799-1888). Amos had two sisters (Rowena (1822-1887), and Martha Ann (1826-1862), and seven brothers (Joseph Hale (1824-1908), Nathan (b. 1830); Jacob Hale (1833-1885); John and William, twins, (born and died in 1835); Samuel H. (1836-1923), and James Hiram (1839-1909).

Hiram L. Mendenhall was a minister, extensive landowner, miller, and farmer by trade and a Hicksite Quaker and abolitionist in belief, one of the most outstanding figures to be found in the list of Quaker pioneers. In 1836 Mendenhall clan (Hiram together with his father Nathan and several of his brothers and their families) moved from Clinton County, Ohio, to Randolph County, Indiana, where he entered 400 acres of land (a wild forest), and opened a fine farm. Three years later he erected a sawmill, then two grist mills, and later on a woolen factory.

In 1837 Hiram Mendenhall laid out the town of Unionport, and in 1844, he, as a representative of the Randolph County Anti-Slavery Society, presented a petition to presidential candidate Henry Clay, urging him to free his slaves. Clay refused and publicly rebuked Mendenhall. In 1845 Hiram went on to pool his property with others to form the Unionport commune of the Society for Universal Inquiry and Reform. This social experiment soon collapsed (only one year later), leaving Mendenhall’s financial situation hopeless. In 1850 during the California Gold Rush Hiram and Amos went to California to recoup the family fortunes in the gold fields. They didn’t find gold, but eventually erected a sawmill on the Sacramento river, and sold it for a goodly sum of money. In 1852 they embarked for home upon a steamer by way of Havana, Cuba, but Hiram died of cholera on 30 June on shipboard in the Gulf of Mexico.

Amos, his mother, and his siblings continued to live in the vicinity of Unionport (in Cerro Gordo), where Amos managed a farm, general store, manufactured goods, etc. In the 1880 census, his occupation is given as “manufacture.” Amos undoubtedly was an imaginative man and a very good mechanic, because, besides the above-mentioned patent for the calculator, he is the holder of several more patents in the USA and Canada for gold mining devices (US360713 and US540997), tricycle (US453151), and bicycle (US740156).

Amos Cowgill Mendenhall never married. He died on 10 April 1909, in Unionport, IN.