In the 13 June 1863 issue of The Press newspaper in Christchurch, New Zealand, was published a correspondence with the fancy name Darwin among the Machines (you can see the full text of the correspondence at the bottom of the page, or to click for the PDF version). The author was signed Cellarius, which was a pseudonym of Samuel Butler (1835-1902), an English novelist and essayist (he was an ultra-Darwinian, thinking Darwin would be looked upon as a most wonderful philosopher and possibly a prophet), who lived in New Zealand from 1859 until 1864, occupied in sheep-farming in Canterbury Province, and wrote much for The Press.

In the above-mentioned correspondence was raised (most probably) for the first time the possibility that machines were a kind of mechanical life undergoing constant evolution and that eventually, machines might supplant humans as the dominant species in the world.

Samuel Butler pointed out that:
The views of machinery which we are thus feebly indicating will suggest the solution of one of the greatest and most mysterious questions of the day. We refer to the question: What sort of creature man’s next successor in the supremacy of the earth is likely to be? We have often heard this debated; but it appears to us that we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organization; we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self-acting power which will be to them what intellect has been to the human race. In the course of ages, we shall find ourselves the inferior race. Inferior in power, inferior in that moral quality of self-control, we shall look up to them as the acme of all that the best and wisest man can ever dare to aim at.

The correspondence ends with a creepy appeal:
Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the well-wisher of his species. Let there be no exceptions made, no quarter shown; let us at once go back to the primeval condition of the race.

On 29 July 1865, Lucubratio Ebria, an article, containing variations of the view in Darwin among the Machines, sent by Butler from England, appeared in The Press.

In 1872 Butler published his satirical novel Erewhon: or, Over the Range, in which he developed his idea into The Book of the Machines, three chapters of the novel. The Erewhonian society Butler envisioned had long ago undergone a revolution that destroyed most mechanical inventions. The narrator of the story finds a book that details the reasons for this revolution, which he translates for the reader, discussing also the possibility of machine consciousness, as well as that machines can reproduce like living organisms:
But the machines which reproduce machinery do not reproduce machines after their own kind. A thimble may be made by machinery, but it was not made by, neither will it ever make, a thimble. Here, again, if we turn to nature we shall find abundance of analogies which will teach us that a reproductive system may be in full force without the thing produced being of the same kind as that which produced it. Very few creatures reproduce after their own kind; they reproduce something which has the potentiality of becoming that which their parents were. Thus the butterfly lays an egg, which egg can become a caterpillar, which caterpillar can become a chrysalis, which chrysalis can become a butterfly; and though I freely grant that the machines cannot be said to have more than the germ of a true reproductive system at present, have we not just seen that they have only recently obtained the germs of a mouth and stomach? And may not some stride be made in the direction of true reproduction which shall be as great as that which has been recently taken in the direction of true feeding?

Erewhonian society came to the conclusion:
…that the machines were ultimately destined to supplant the race of man, and to become instinct with a vitality as different from, and superior to, that of animals, as animal to vegetable life. So… they made a clean sweep of all machinery that had not been in use for more than two hundred and seventy-one years…

THE PRESS

“Nihil utile quod non honestum.”
Vol. III.—No. 192
SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 1863.
…
Correspondence
DARWIN AMONG THE MACHINES
TO THE EDITOR OF THE PRESS

Sir,—There are few things of which the present generation is more justly proud than of the wonderful improvements which are daily taking place in all sorts of mechanical appliances. And indeed it is matter for great congratulation on many grounds. It is unnecessary to mention these here, for they are sufficiently obvious; our present business lies with considerations which may somewhat tend to humble our pride and to make us think seriously of the future prospects of the human race. If we revert to the earliest primordial types of mechanical life, to the lever, the wedge, the inclined plane, the screw and the pulley, or (for analogy would lead us one step further) to that one primordial type from which all the mechanical kingdom has been developed, we mean to the lever itself, and if we then examine the machinery of the Great Eastern, we find ourselves almost awestruck at the vast development of the mechanical world, at the gigantic strides with which it has advanced in comparison with the slow progress of the animal and vegetable kingdom. We shall find it impossible to refrain from asking ourselves what the end of this mighty movement is to be. In what direction is it tending? What will be its upshot? To give a few imperfect hints towards a solution of these questions is the object of the present letter.
We have used the words “mechanical life,” “the mechanical kingdom,” “the mechanical world” and so forth, and we have done so advisedly, for as the vegetable kingdom was slowly developed from the mineral, and as in like manner the animal supervened upon the vegetable, so now in these last few ages an entirely new kingdom has sprung up, of which we as yet have only seen what will one day be considered the antediluvian prototypes of the race.

We regret deeply that our knowledge both of natural history and of machinery is too small to enable us to undertake the gigantic task of classifying machines into the genera and sub-genera, species, varieties and sub-varieties, and so forth, of tracing the connecting links between machines of widely different characters, of pointing out how subservience to the use of man has played that part among machines which natural selection has performed in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, of pointing out rudimentary organs * which exist in some few machines, feebly developed and perfectly useless, yet serving to mark descent from some ancestral type which has either perished or been modified into some new phase of mechanical existence. We can only point out this field for investigation; it must be followed by others whose education and talents have been of a much higher order than any which we can lay claim to.

Some few hints we have determined to venture upon, though we do so with the profoundest diffidence. Firstly, we would remark that as some of the lowest of the vertebrate attained a far greater size than has descended to their more highly organized living representatives, so a diminution in the size of machines has often attended their development and progress. Take the watch for instance. Examine the beautiful structure of the little animal, watch the intelligent play of the minute members which compose it; yet this little creature is but a development of the cumbrous clocks of the thirteenth century— it is no deterioration from them. The day may come when clocks, which certainly at the present day are not diminishing in bulk, may be entirely superseded by the universal use of watches, in which case clocks will become extinct like the earlier saurians, while the watch (whose tendency has for some years been rather to decrease in size than the contrary) will remain the only existing type of an extinct race.

The views of machinery which we are thus feebly indicating will suggest the solution of one of the greatest and most mysterious questions of the day. We refer to the question: What sort of creature man’s next successor in the supremacy of the earth is likely to be. We have often heard this debated; but it appears to us that we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organization; we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self-acting power which will be to them what intellect has been to the human race. In the course of ages we shall find ourselves the inferior race. Inferior in power, inferior in that moral quality of self-control, we shall look up to them as the acme of all that the best and wisest man can ever dare to aim at. No evil passions, no jealousy, no avarice, no impure desires will disturb the serene might of those glorious creatures. Sin, shame, and sorrow will have no place among them. Their minds will be in a state of perpetual calm, the contentment of a spirit that knows no wants, is disturbed by no regrets. Ambition will never torture them. Ingratitude will never cause them the uneasiness of a moment. The guilty conscience, the hope deferred, the pains of exile, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes—these will be entirely unknown to them. If they want “feeding” (by the use of which very word we betray our recognition of them as living organism) they will be attended by patient slaves whose business and interest it will be to see that they shall want for nothing. If they are out of order they will be promptly attended to by physicians who are thoroughly acquainted with their constitutions; if they die, for even these glorious animals will not be exempt from that necessary and universal consummation, they will immediately enter into a new phase of existence, for what machine dies entirely in every part at one and the same instant?

We take it that when the state of things shall have arrived which we have been above attempting to describe, man will have become to the machine what the horse and the dog are to man. He will continue to exist, nay even to improve, and will be probably better off in his state of domestication under the beneficent rule of the machines than he is in his present wild state. We treat our horses, dogs, cattle, and sheep, on the whole, with great kindness; we give them whatever experience teaches us to be best for them, and there can be no doubt that our use of meat has added to the happiness of the lower animals far more than it has detracted from it; in like manner it is reasonable to suppose that the machines will treat us kindly, for their existence is as dependent upon ours as ours is upon the lower animals. They cannot kill us and eat us as we do sheep; they will not only require our services in the parturition of their young (which branch of their economy will remain always in our hands), but also in feeding them, in setting them right when they are sick, and burying their dead or working up their corpses into new machines. It is obvious that if all the animals in Great Britain save man alone were to die, and if at the same time all intercourse with foreign countries were by some sudden catastrophe to be rendered perfectly impossible, it is obvious that under such circumstances the loss of human life would be something fearful to contemplate—in like manner were mankind to cease, the machines would be as badly off or even worse. The fact is that our interests are inseparable from theirs, and theirs from ours. Each race is dependent upon the other for innumerable benefits, and, until the reproductive organs of the machines have been developed in a manner which we are hardly yet able to conceive, they are entirely dependent upon man for even the continuance of their species. It is true that these organs may be ultimately developed, inasmuch as man’s interest lies in that direction; there is nothing which our infatuated race would desire more than to see a fertile union between two steam engines; it is true that machinery is even at this present time employed in begetting machinery, in becoming the parent of machines often after its own kind, but the days of flirtation, courtship, and matrimony appear to be very remote, and indeed can hardly be realized by our feeble and imperfect imagination.

Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question.

Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the well-wisher of his species. Let there be no exceptions made, no quarter shown; let us at once go back to the primeval condition of the race. If it be urged that this is impossible under the present condition of human affairs, this at once proves that the mischief is already done, that our servitude has commenced in good earnest, that we have raised a race of beings whom it is beyond our power to destroy, and that we are not only enslaved but are absolutely acquiescent in our bondage.

For the present we shall leave this subject, which we present gratis to the members of the Philosophical Society. Should they consent to avail themselves of the vast field which we have pointed out, we shall endeavour to labour in it ourselves at some future and indefinite period.

I am Sir, &c.,
CELLARIUS

Note.—We were asked by a learned brother philosopher who saw this article in MS. what we meant by alluding to rudimentary organs in machines. Could we, he asked, give any example of such organs? We pointed to the little protuberance at the bottom of the bowl of our tobacco pipe. This organ was originally designed for the same purpose as the rim at the bottom of a tea-cup, which is but another form of the same function. Its purpose was to keep the heat of the pipe from marking the table on which it rested. Originally, as we have seen in very early tobacco pipes, this protuberance was of a very different shape to what it is now. It was broad at the bottom and flat, so that while the pipe was being smoked, the bowl might rest upon the table. Use and disuse have here come into play and served to reduce the function to its present rudimentary condition. That these rudimentary organs are rarer in machinery than in animal life is owing to the more prompt action of the human selection as compared with the slower but even surer operation of natural selection. Man may make mistakes; in the long run nature never does so. We have only given an imperfect example, but the intelligent reader will supply himself with illustrations.

We don’t know if the venerable Ramon Llull had a sense of humor, and if he evinced it by designing the logical machine, described in his medieval Ars magna generalis ultima of 1305. But we can be quite sure, that more than four centuries later such a sense of humor was evinced by the great Anglo-Irish satirist Jonathan Swift, describing a similar machine in his remarkable Gulliver’s Travels of 1726. Though Swift does not reference either Ars generalis ultima of Llull, or Arte Combinatoria of Leibniz, the passage for his fictional device is considered a parody of Llull’s method.

In his fantasy novel Gulliver’s Travels, written to vex the world rather than divert it, Swift describes a fictional device (consisting of a big frame, manipulated by means of iron handles), called simply Engine, which generates permutations of word sets, as the ultimate goal was (no more no less:-) to give the world a complete body of all arts and sciences. It was (probably) the earliest literary reference to a fictional device resembling aspects of a modern computer. Without a doubt, when Swift wrote his novel the notion that a machine could handle language was an absurdity to be satirized.

What is the story of Frame Engine of Jonathan Swift?

One day the main character Lemuel Gulliver of the novel was permitted to see the grand academy of Lagado. While visiting the part of the academy, where the projectors in speculative learning resided, he met several professors and their students…

The first professor I saw, was in a very large room, with forty pupils about him. After salutation, observing me to look earnestly upon a frame, which took up the greatest part of both the length and breadth of the room, he said, “Perhaps I might wonder to see him employed in a project for improving speculative knowledge, by practical and mechanical operations. But the world would soon be sensible of its usefulness; and he flattered himself, that a more noble, exalted thought never sprang in any other man’s head. Every one knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas, by his contrivance, the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study.” He then led me to the frame, about the sides, whereof all his pupils stood in ranks. It was twenty feet square, placed in the middle of the room. The superfices was composed of several bits of wood, about the bigness of a die, but some larger than others. They were all linked together by slender wires. These bits of wood were covered, on every square, with paper pasted on them; and on these papers were written all the words of their language, in their several moods, tenses, and declensions; but without any order. The professor then desired me “to observe; for he was going to set his engine at work.” The pupils, at his command, took each of them hold of an iron handle, whereof there were forty fixed round the edges of the frame; and giving them a sudden turn, the whole disposition of the words was entirely changed. He then commanded six-and-thirty of the lads, to read the several lines softly, as they appeared upon the frame; and where they found three or four words together that might make part of a sentence, they dictated to the four remaining boys, who were scribes. This work was repeated three or four times, and at every turn, the engine was so contrived, that the words shifted into new places, as the square bits of wood moved upside down.

Six hours a day the young students were employed in this labour; and the professor showed me several volumes in large folio, already collected, of broken sentences, which he intended to piece together, and out of those rich materials, to give the world a complete body of all arts and sciences; which, however, might be still improved, and much expedited, if the public would raise a fund for making and employing five hundred such frames in Lagado, and oblige the managers to contribute in common their several collections.

He assured me “that this invention had employed all his thoughts from his youth; that he had emptied the whole vocabulary into his frame, and made the strictest computation of the general proportion there is in books between the numbers of particles, nouns, and verbs, and other parts of speech.”

The prominent English philosopher Thomas Hobbes is considered by some historians as one of the prophets of AI (Artificial Intelligence), primarily for his proclamation By ratiocination, I mean computation, in his 1651 book Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, commonly called simply Leviathan.

Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury (5 Apr 1588–4 Dec 1679) is best known for his political thought, and deservedly so, because his vision of the world is strikingly original and still relevant to modern politics. His main concern is the structure of society and legitimate government, e.g. how human beings can live together in peace and avoid the danger and fear of a civil conflict. He poses fearful alternatives: we should give our obedience to an unaccountable sovereign (a person or group empowered to decide every social and political issue), otherwise we will face a state of nature, that closely resembles civil war—a situation of global insecurity, where all have reason to fear violent death and where rewarding human cooperation is all but impossible.

In the above-mentioned book Leviathan, which was written during the English Civil War (1642–1651), Hobbes established the foundation for most of the Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory.

The slogan By ratiocination, I mean computation, as Hobbes explained, conveys two basic ideas:
First, thinking is mental discourse. That is, thinking consists of symbolic operations, just like talking out loud or calculating with pen and paper, except, of course, that it is conducted internally. Hence thoughts are not themselves expressed in spoken or written symbols but rather in special brain tokens, which Hobbes called phantasms or thought parcels.
Second, thinking is at its clearest and most rational when it follows methodical rules—like accountants, following the exact rules for numerical calculations. In other words, explicit ratiocination is a mechanical process, like operating a mental abacus: all these little parcels (which, of course, need not stand only for numbers) are being whipped back and forth exactly according to the rules of reason. Or, in cases where the rules are being ignored or bent, the person is simply confused.

Let’s see how Hobbes himself elaborated the point in Leviathan, Chapter V, Of Reason and Science:
Reason, what it is: When a man Reasoneth, he does nothing else but conceive a summe total, from Addition of parcels; or conceive a Remainder, from Subtraction of one sum from another… And though in some things, (as in numbers,) besides Adding and Substracting, men name other operations, as Multiplying and Dividing; yet they are the same; for Multiplication, is but Adding together of things equal; and Division, but Substracting of one thing, as often as we can. These operations are not incident to Numbers only, but to all manner of things that can be added together, and taken one out of another. For as Arithmeticians teach to add and subtract in numbers; so the Geometricians teach the same in lines, figures, angles, proportions, times, degrees of swiftness, force, power, and the like; the Logicians teach the same in Consequences of words; adding together two Names to make an Affirmation, and two Affirmations to make a Syllogism; and many Syllogisms to make a Demonstration; and from the summe, or Conclusion of a Syllogisme, they substract one Proposition, to finde the other.

Hobbes obviously overstretched the metaphor of addition, but we can think about that after all these years.

Thomas Hobbes also eagerly embraced the idea that reality itself is fundamentally mathematical: ultimately nothing but tiny moving particles. Hence he readily agreed that so-called sensible qualities (colors, odors, tickles, and the like) are not really in objects at all, but only in perceivers.

The Curta is a remarkable mechanical calculator, based on the stepped drum mechanism of Gottfried Lebnitz. It is a small, hand-cranked mechanical calculator, conceived by Curt Herzstark at the end of the 1920s, designed in the early 1930s, but introduced as late as 1948. It has an extremely compact design, a small cylinder that fits in the palm of the hand. It can be used to perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and, with more difficulty, square roots and other operations.

While the cylindrical arrangement of the calculator is certainly quite rare, it is not original or unique to the Curta. Some of the earliest calculating machines, for example the Hahn’s calculator of the 1770s, had sliders, dials, or stepped drums around the top and sides of a cylinder. The remarkable calculator of Axel Jakob Petersson from 1873 also used similar cylindrical construction. Christel Hamman’s US Patent 703785 from 1902 describes a machine, which is very similar in concept to the Curta, having the same vertical setting sliders around the periphery, the single central stepped drum, and the lift-able upper section containing the registers, similar cylindrical arrangement was used in Hamman’s Gauss calculator, which was built commercially from 1905. Herzstark’s undisputed achievement was to turn these earlier cylindrical concepts into a miniature mechanical masterpiece.

Curt Herzstark (1902-1988) was the son of the famous Austrian manufacturer of mechanical calculators—Samuel Jacob Herzstark (1867-1937). Curt was only 3 when his father began production of the Austria calculator in Vienna. Curt grew up with calculators and studied mechanics. After finishing school, he began working at his father’s company, but later he went to work in AstraWerke and Wanderer calculator factories in Chemnitz, Germany, in order to gain experience in the production of various machines. After about a year in Germany, Herzstark returned to the family factory in Vienna and began to manage the factory beginning in 1930. By the mid-1930s he was developing plans for a miniature cylindrical calculating machine and by 1938, he had filed a key patent, covering his complemented stepped drum, Deutsches Reichspatent (German Empire Patent) №747073.

By 1937, based on requests from factory customers, Herzstark had preliminary plans for a handheld mechanical calculating machine. The initial concept was for a small portable adding machine with a central staggering drum.

The good times for Herzstark family and company lasted until the end of 1937. In October died Samuel Herzstark, and only several months later (in March 1938) Hitler’s troops invade Austria.

From 1938-1943, the family factory was contracted to make precision gauges for the German military, and Herzstark was banned from continuing the construction and distribution of calculating machines. Curt became a target of the Germans, since he was the son of a Catholic mother (Marie Amalie Herzstark) and a Jewish father. In 1943, he was arrested and sent to Buchenwald concentration camp, where he worked in the mechanics factory as a technician. While in prison, Herzstark was allowed to continue to design his calculating machine.

Curt managed to survive the concentration camp and at the end of WWII he was able to commence production of the machines at a new factory in Liechtenstein, Contina A.G., launching the first machines in 1948.

The original name on the Buchenwald drawings was “Liliput”, but the big bosses of Contina AG did not like the name, so it became “Curta”, the female form of Curt.

The Curta was produced in two basic models: Curta Type I (see the left nearby image) and Type II (right image).

In the table below you can see some details about Type I and Type II Curta models:

Model	Type I	Type II
“Entry/Counter/Results” Readouts	8 x 6 x 11	11 x 8 x 15
Data Entry Register (Multiplicand)	8 digits	11 digits
Crank Turns Counter (Multiplier)	6 digits	8 digits
Result Register (Product)	11 digits	15 digits
Add or Multiply to	11 places	15 places
Divide To	6 places	8 places
Diameter	53 mm	65 mm
Height	85 mm	90 mm
Weight	230 g	360 g

Despite the bad management of the Contina A.G., an estimated 150000 Curta calculators have been made until 1972 (some 85000 Type I and some 65000 Type II). The initially estimated world demand of 3 to 4 million pieces was not nearly reached.

Curtas were very practical and useful devices, and were very popular, especially in the surveying industry and engineering. A book of tables and a Curta in its metal can could easily be taken into the field, allowing calculations to be completed and measurements verified without needing to return to the office. Many Curta calculators were purchased simply as curiosities or as objets d’art, and some of these can still be found unused in their original packaging.

Biography of Curt Herzstark

Curt (Kurt) Herzstark was born on 26 January 1902 in Vienna. He was the first-born of Samuel Jakob Herzstark, an Austrian Jew, self-taught engineer, and businessman, and his wife, the “native” Austrian Marie Amalie Herzstark (nee Toman), a bookkeeper. Later the family had another son, Ernst Herzstark (born 30 Apr. 1906—died in 1992).

The father, Samuel Jakob Herzstark (see the nearby photo) was born on 10 October 1867 in Vienna, to Benjamin Herzstark (born 1830 in Danzig, Prussia—died 1872 in Denver, Colorado) and Franzisca (Fanny) Herzstark, nee Reches (born 1834 in Dobromil, Galicia—died 1911 in Vienna), the daughter of a doctor. They were German-speaking Jews, who in the early 1860s moved to Vienna, where they tried to establish. They had two children: a daughter Amalie (born 14 April 1861 in Dobromil), then Samuel, born in 1867 in Vienna). In Austria, Benjamin Herzstark did not find a good job and in 1870 he emigrated to America to try his luck, leaving his family in Austria. He went to Denver, got some land, and was very hopeful that his family could come over soon, but unfortunately, he died suddenly in 1872 of blood-poisoning.

Samuel studied at a normal grade school in Vienna and then five years in high school, but was forced to interrupt his studies, because his mother ran out of money. Only 15 years old, he was made a teacher, then he began an apprenticeship in a machine factory, then he took on a wide variety of positions, because he wanted to learn a lot.

After a short service in the army in 1887-88, Samuel Herzstark worked in several companies, mainly in sales departments. In 1895 he departed for the USA. There he worked one year for Remington Group, in the department where typewriters were produced. While there he became acquainted with many other types of machines, in addition to typewriters. In 1896 he returned to Vienna, and joined the company Glogowski & Cie (the European representative of Remington), to sell Burroughs calculating machines in Austria and Germany.

In 1897 Samuel Herzstark meets his eventual wife Marie Amalie Toman (born 8 Sep. 1875–died 15 Jan. 1956). She was a free spirit, just like him. As Samuel left Judaism, Marie left the Catholic church and they joined the Lutheran church, and their children were brought up in the Lutheran spirit.

In the late 1890s Samuel Herzstark became acquainted not only with Burroughs calculators, but also with the machines of the leading European manufacturers, namely arithmometer of Thomas de Colmar and the similar machine of Burkhardt. He saw that different things on the machines could be further improved so that they would be more saleable. Soon he was obsessed with these ideas, and began to wonder whether it was indeed possible for him to produce such a machine independently.

In 1905, using the financial support of the banker Gustav Perger, Samuel Herzstark co-founded the first Austrian factory for calculating machines, Rechenmaschinenwerk AUSTRIA, Herzstark & Co., and next year began production of the calculating machine Austria (based on Thomas system, as modified by Burckhardt), hiring as a foreman the young master-watchmaker Johannes Hayard from Glashütte. They sold some 7000 machines between 1906 and 1914 (cost 700-2500 Krone, a significant amount, as then a skilled worker only got 200 Krone a month), and obtained many patents in the field of calculating devices during this period (about 25 patents for adaptations, additions, and improvements to the Thomas calculator). From 1920 the company worked together with the German company Bäuerle from St. Georgen, the manufacturer of Peerless calculating machine. Bäuerle produces the raw works, Herzstark added a keyboard, automatic divider device and motor drive.

In 1916, despite his age and his flourishing business (at the beginning of World War I, around 100 employees (including 50 well-trained precision mechanics) worked in the company, but in 1914 his factory was ordered to produce military equipment round-the-clock, specifically shrapnel detonators), Samuel was drafted at the army and took part in WWI from 1916 till 1918.

In 1931 Samuel Herzstark bought a cinema, Kristall-Palast-Kino at the Wiener Prater. In 1933 he was awarded “Goldenes Verdienstzeichen” of the Republic of Austria. He continued to manage his business until his death on 24 October 1937, and luckily he has made his wife his sole heir long before, and this proved to be a very clever decision quite soon.

Curt was only 3 when his father began production of the Austria calculator in Vienna (see the lower image of 8-years old Curt demonstrating an Austria calculator at the International Office Machines Exhibition in Gartenbau, Vienna, 1910). Curt grew up with calculators and studied their mechanics. As a boy, he demonstrated also a talent for music. The Austrian composer and virtuoso Fritz Kreisler (a cousin of Samuel Herzstark) insisted on musical education for Curt, but his father prevailed and the technical training was selected.

After studying at an elementary school (1908-1912), and at a middle school, in 1916 Curt entered a Real-gymnasium, where he studied Latin and English. Then his father said that it did not make sense to finish High School and to waste years studying sciences there. So, when Curt was 14 years old he spent a year out of school and worked in his father’s factory as an apprentice in fine machines and tool construction, then in 1918, he went to the so-called Staatsgewerbeschule in Vienna (a kind of Engineering School), to be educated as a die-maker and precision mechanic.

After graduating from the Staatsgewerbeschule in 1922 Curt went back to the family business to continue learning the trade, but soon his father sent him to work in two factories in Chemnitz, Germany (AstraWerke (which produced a 10-key adding machine, similar to Dalton) and then in Wanderer (which manufactured automobiles, motorcycles, a woodworking machine, and an adding machine)), in order to gain practical experience.

After about a year in Germany, in 1924 Curt returned to the family factory in Vienna. Now that he is almost perfect in technical matters, but his father sends him to the sales department: “It is also important to know the wishes of the customers!” Then Samuel handed over to Curt the sales organizations in Czechoslovakia and Hungary to reorganize them, and Curt was very efficient in this task.

In 1928 Curt Herzstark made his first invention. It was a multi-summator (also called Multimator), a machine that can automatically add horizontal and vertical columns in the calculating mechanism in a single operation. The machine was presented to the public at an international office machine exhibition in Berlin and became a sensation.

By the mid-1930s Curt was developing plans for a miniature cylindrical calculating machine and by 1938, he had filed a key patent, covering his complemented stepped drum, Deutsches Reichspatent №747073.

The good times for the Herzstark family and company ended in the autumn of 1937. In October died Samuel Herzstark (Marie Herzstark, as a sole heir, appointed as the manager of the machine factory Curt, while his brother Ernst managed the cinema business of the family), and only several months later (in March 1938) Hitler’s troops invade Austria. The business was already running badly, when 2 months later a large car stopped in front of the factory and five people get off. As it turns out later: 2 Wehrmacht officers, the others were specialists in precision mechanics. They were looking for a company capable of producing high-precision machines for the army.

The Germans were impressed by the capabilities of the factory, and they made to Herzstark a proposal, which cannot be refused. Thus from 1938-1943, the family factory, managed by Curt, was contracted to make measuring instruments and distance gauges for the German military, and Curt had to postpone his plans for a portable calculator.

In the summer of 1943, two workers from Herzstark’s factory were arrested by Gestapo for listening to English radio and duplicating the messages with a typewriter. Curt as their manager and half-Jew also got into the investigation. He is thrown out of the factory, and a few days later he was summoned to testimony and arrested. His alleged offenses: support for Jews, state disintegration, and relationship with Aryan women. He was hurriedly found guilty and in November 1943 was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp.

The first weeks of his stay in Buchenwald were creepy and he thought he is going to die soon, but in December 1943 he was ordered to the commandant’s office. There he met an SS officer, who holds his CV in his hand. “So you worked for the Wehrmacht? If you do not suffer from memory loss and obey our orders obediently, you will have a bearable life in the camp.” Thus Herzstark was assigned to the attached Gustloff-Werk (a fine mechanical factory in Weimar, which was the workplace for about 4500 prisoners, leased by the SS camp management to the company).

Life in Gustloff-Werk was easier, and Herzstark even received special status and was allowed to draw plans for his new, small calculating machine in the evenings and on Sundays. The new machine should be presented to Hitler as a gift.

In August 1944 the Gustloff factory was completely destroyed by the American bombings. Many of the workers were killed and injured, but Curt again managed to survive. Soon he was relocated to Billroda, a factory in a former potash mine, 600 m underground, where parts for the V1 and V2 rockets were produced. The work there probably saved his life, as he already had several tuberculosis infections. But this salt air, at 21 degrees constant temperature, was the purest medicine for his disease. Many others are not doing so well: more people are killed in the fabrication of V1 and V2 than by the weapons themselves.

At the beginning of April 1945, Curt returned to Buchenwald, and several days later the US Army reached it. Curt Herzstark was free! In Weimar, he got in touch with a former representative of his company and shows him the plans for the new machine. He was astonished and recommended Curt to the Rheinmetallwerke, a large factory for typewriters and calculators in Sömmerda, only 20 km from Weimar. A few days later, five gentlemen, including the Director, whom Herzstark knew from patent deals in 1928, arrived. The experts immediately recognized the value of these plans and the assessment can hardly be better. Curt was immediately named a Director at Rheinmetallwerke and he began to produce three prototypes from his drawings.

As the area around Weimar became a Russian zone, and Herzstark learned that the Russians deported many German experts to Russia, he decided to take a risk and to try to go back to Vienna. Thus in early December 1945, he managed to join his family. There he was surprised positively by the good condition of the factory, but negatively by the fact, that his brother was appointed as a manager, and he wanted Curt to share the design of his new machine with him. This family problem, combined with the lack of money to start the production, forced him to search for contacts with businessmen in Switzerland and USA.

Soon Herzstark found a good factory in Switzerland, and wanted to start production there, but he was eventually contacted by the government of Liechtenstein, and he demonstrated his machine to Prince Franz Josef II of Liechtenstein, who was looking for talented professionals and inventions that would be suitable for his country. The Prince was excited: “Yes, that’s the right product for us!”. Herzstark was invited to establish a brand new factory for production. He was appointed as a technical director with a 10-year contract, but without other management responsibilities. Moreover, he was gradually isolated from the company management and remained only as a freelance consultant for several years, and left in 1956, transferring his patents to Contina AD for the sum of 350000 francs (a significant amount for the time).

On 15 November 1946, Curt Herzstark married Hertha Spindler from Vienna, and they settled in his home in Nendeln, Liechtenstein, a village near Mauren, where was located the factory of Contina AG. Their son Curt Albert is born there on 29 December 1946. On 15 September 1948, was born their daughter Christa Viktoria (who died on 16 May 2018). In 1954 Hertha and the children relocated to Vienna, while Curt Herzstark lived mainly in Liechtenstein until the end of his life.

Curt Herzstark has neither become famous nor rich and died on 27 October 1988, in Nendeln, Liechtenstein. Only a small circle of scientists, technicians, and collectors hold up the memory of the man, who made the last great invention in the field of mechanical calculating machines!

Victor Adding Machine Co. was established in Chicago on 8 Mar 1918, by three men: Oliver David Johantgen (1874-1932), an engineer with a long (since 1896) experience in the field of mechanical calculators and a holder of numerous patents in the USA, France, and Germany, who was the chief designer and the brains behind the whole operation, O. E. Cheesman, who was responsible for sales, and his brother-in-law George S. Eldred (1866-1943), who financed the company.

Johantgen designed adding machines for 20 years, but didn’t manage to find a serious investor until 1916, when he met Eldred, who was also an amateur mechanic and inventor (e.g. in 1911 he got a patent US1038735A for cigar-lighter), and soon they established Victor Adding Machine Co. The struggling company faced almost certain collapse until they secured at the end of 1918 a deposit of 100$ on a machine from one Carl Buehler (1866-1932), the owner (with his two brothers) of Buehler Bros. Co., a successful chain of butcher’s shops and grocery stores in Chicago and across the Midwest.

Buehler soon discovered that the new company was sadly lacking in capital, production facilities, and business experience, and that his promised adding machine was largely “vaporware”. However, Buehler recognized the potential of a low-cost machine, that could be sold to businesses such as his own, and agreed to get 10 shares of the company’s stock, to bankroll the company and assist in getting the project off the ground. He was quickly elected President of Victor, soon becoming the majority stockholder and installing his eldest son Albert Carl Buehler (1897-1971) as manager.

The first Victor adding machine, the Model 110 (see the nearby image), was introduced in 1919, but it was not a very successful device. Model 110 was a full-keyboard non-printing machine with a front-mounted register, with only repeat and zeroing keys. So it would appear that this first model was a key-set design requiring a handle pull for each entry. In effect, it was a lister without the listing equipment. Apparently, very few of these machines were ever sold and Victor moved swiftly into the production of a lister model (strangely enough, under the same name—Model 110). The company turned a profit in 1922, and built its 100000^th machine in 1926. The early non-printing model cost $85, the model without carriage cost $100, and the model with carriage $125. In 1921 the machine was extended at the rear to include a printing mechanism and was released as the 200 series. At a retail price of $100, 2000 units were sold in the first year.

The original Victor 110 model weighed far less than standard machines of the day (16 kg vs 45 kg), contained far fewer components (about 1250 vs 2500+), and could be built affordably on modern screw machines and punch presses, rather than old-fashioned casting and milling. The Buehlers also settled on keeping the price tag at a solid $100—the same as an average working man’s typewriter of the day, but far less than most commercial adding machines.

Between 1921 and 1925, Victor’s annual sales jumped from less than $300000 to nearly $2 million. The Victor sales team used innovative techniques, including bringing the actual machines door-to-door (instead of photos) and offering incentives like full refunds or free repairs for damaged devices. This sounded like a great perk to buyers, but from Victor’s perspective, they were building such a smooth-running machine that those supposed repair, maintenance, and refund costs would actually amount to a sliver of their total budget.

An improved 300 series appeared in 1923, and a machine with direct subtraction in 1928. The 300 series grew to include 6, 8, or 10-column machines, versions for fractions, time, or feet and inches, and export models for Sterling currency. The 500 series (see the upper image) with an optional internal motor drive appeared in 1931, greatly improving the quality of the product while keeping prices level.

Until 1958 the total number of Victor calculators reached 1500000 devices. During the 1950s Victor began to diversify into other areas such as cash registers, toys, and sporting goods. The company moved to public ownership as the major partner in a “merger” with the Comptometer Corporation in 1961. By the mid-1960s the Victor Comptometer Corporation was producing more than 75 basic models, and claimed 25% of the American calculator market. Despite several acquisitions by other companies, Victor calculators are still in production now, by Victor Technology, the largest provider of printing calculators in the US.

In the nearby image, you can see the Victor Medalist 204 from the end of the 1970s, a general-purpose office calculator using a single-chip processor (A4540EB), that was developed by Rockwell in 1976.

Biography of Oliver Johantgen

Oliver David Johantgen was born on 8 July 1874, in Charlestown, Clark County, Indiana, USA. He was the fourth son of Nicholas Johantgen (1827–1908) and Mary Lambert-Johantgen (1834–1901).

Nicholas Johantgen was born on 24 Oct 1827 in Lebach, a town in Saarland, Germany. He emigrated to the USA in 1848, settling around Charlestown, Indiana, and several years later married the German-born Mary Lambert from Union, Boone County, Kentucky. The family had nine children—five sons: John Frank (1857–1944), George (1864–1886), Walter Francis (1869–1950), Oliver David (1874-1932), and Chauncey Rose (1876-1945); and four daughters: Virginia (born 1855), Sarah (1861–1956), Mary Elizabeth (1866-1947), and Anna (born 1871). Nicholas used to work as a farmer, but was also twice assessor of his township and candidate for commissioner.

Oliver Johantgen married Ethel Geneva Handy (3 Jan 1880-15 Sep 1970), daughter of Frederick and Emma Handy from Oregon, Indiana. They had a son: Albert Johantgen (1923-2001), and a daughter: Ruth Johantgen-McLaughlin.

Oliver David Johantgen died on 14 April 1932 (aged 57) in Evanston, Cook County, Illinois, USA.

The German engineer Christel Hamann (1870-1948) is an outstanding figure in the world of mechanical calculators. He is a holder of numerous patents (in the USA, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, and Great Britain) in this area and the constructor of countless mechanisms and calculators, let’s mention only Gauss, Berolina, Mercedes Euklid, Hamann Manus, Trick, Tasma, a differential engine, etc. Let’s examine two of Hamann’s remarkable calculating machines.

Gauss Calculator of Christel Hamann

The idea of Gauss Calculator, based on the stepped drum of Leibniz, mounted in the center of the machine, was not a new one. As early as the middle 1860s the brilliant Swedish engineer Axel Jacob Petersson invented a very interesting machine of this type, but it didn’t become popular, and only several devices had been produced.

At the end of 1899 a local Berlin businessman (merchant), Paul Haack (it is unknown if Haack was aware of the machine of Petersson, but let’s mention only an interesting detail—the family name of Petersson’s wife was Haak, maybe just a coincidence?!) contacted Hamann, with the idea to create a practical and handy calculator, as opposed to the heavy mechanical calculators of the day. Hamann welcomed this idea, as the Landwirtschaftliche Hochschule Berlin had already contacted him with such a request (to construct a small calculator to be used by surveyors), thus Haack and Hamann signed an agreement.

It is not clear what exactly was the role of Haack in future cooperation, but the first patents for the device have been granted namely to Haack, as an inventor or as an assignor of Hamann. Most probably Haack provided the financial support, while Hamann was in charge of the construction. At some point, however, the cooperation between Haack and Hamann abruptly ended and during the next years both of them tried to patent the ideas of the machine and they applied for and had been granted quite a few patents in different countries. Finally, both Hamann and Haack received in 1902 patents for some kind of device (see their first US patent US703785), but only Hamann managed to launch it on the market.

Only several months at the end of 1899 had been enough for the genius Hamann to prepare the first model of the machine, and it was exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900, where it was awarded a gold medal. Industrial production of an improved model was commenced in 1905, and the sales were handled by the mail-order house R. Reiß in Liebenwerda in Saxony.

The machine was in production from 1905 to 1911 in Mathematisch-mechanisches Institut Hamann and in Mercedes-Bureau-Maschinen-Gesellschaft in Berlin (in 1907 Hamann’s company was bought by Mercedes Bureaumaschinenwerke). Some 1000 devices have been produced. Dimensions of the first model are: diameter 12.5, height 10 cm; weight 2.6 kg with base, 850 g without the base. In 1906 was presented a new model, the so-called Mercedes Gauss (see the nearby image), with almost the same construction, but was slightly bigger.

The Differential Engine of Christel Hamann

In 1905 The Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin placed a considerable sum (15000 Marks, later on Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna granted additional 8000 Krones) at the disposal of German professors Julius Bauschinger (Director of the Imperial Observatory of Strasbourg) and Johann Peters (assistant of the Royal Astronomical Calculating Institute of Berlin), in order to prepare and publish tables of logarithms to eight digital places of all numbers from 1 to 200000.

The work started using hand calculations in 1908, but the progress was so slow, that in the same year Bauschinger and Peters contacted Christel Hamann and asked him to put his long experience at his disposal and to construct a new machine, by means of which the values were to be reckoned from the second differences by summation and at once written down.

Hamann readily accepted the challenge. Only several months were enough for the genius-constructor, and the machine (see the nearby photo) was ready at the beginning of 1909. It immediately went into action, worked perfectly, and surpassed all expectations.

The machine (without a printing unit) was 145 cm wide, 20 cm high and about 44 cm deep. Weight was 40 kilograms.

The machine consists of three parts: two similar independent calculating machines (adders), and a printing unit. Each of the two machines consists in turn of a switch and a counter. In the first adder placed next to the user, the second difference is added to the first difference. With the second added in the middle part, this sum is added to the intermediate result, while the third section, the printer, prints the result onto a strip of paper. All differences and the result can be set, operated, and printed with sixteen places. Each of the two adders is driven by its own handle.

The book Tables of Bauschinger and Peters (Logarithmic-Trigonometrical Tables with eight decimal places from 1 to 20000) was published in Leipzig in 1910. A description of the machine of Hamann can be found in the preface of the book, click here to see it. (digitalized in PDF format by Stephan Weiss, www.mechrech.info).

Biography of Christel Hamann

Christian (sobriquet Christel) Bernhard Julius Hamann was born on 27 February 1870, in Hammelwarden, a village between Oldenburg and Bremerhaven in Niedersachsen, Germany. He was the son of Georg Wilhelm Christian Hamann (born 1834 in Oldenburg, son of Hans Joachim Hamann, a musician in Eutin, and Anna Catherina Stuck), a border guard and later usher in Ellwürden, and Catherina Margaretha Louise (b. 1837 in Oberhammelwarden, daughter of the fisherman Christian Schumacher).

It seems Christel Hamann owes his interest in the mechanics and construction of calculating machines to one of his father’s friends, namely the Würzburg Professor of mathematics Dr. Eduard Selling. In the 1880s Selling devised a calculating machine of very original construction (see the machine of Selling), and the young Christel was allowed to take part in the building of this peculiar calculating machine. This collaboration with Prof. Selling must be regarded as crucial for the later life of Hamann.

Obviously from his youth Hamann demonstrated an extreme talent and energy in technics. As a teenager he attended a local technical school in Bremerhaven, working at the same time as an apprentice-mechanic at the Nautischen Institut bei W. Rudolph in Bremerhaven. Then he worked in Mathematisch-Mechanischen Institut von A. Ott in Kempten (Allgäu), in workshops of Carl Zeiss in Jena, and in the workshop of Carl Bamberg in Berlin. In 1896 Hamann became independent by starting his own institute in Berlin—the Mathematical-Mechanical Institute in Berlin-Friedenau.

Initially, he dealt with the construction of geodetic and mathematical instruments (his first patent DE88223 is from 1895 for planimeter), which he developed after new scientific ideas and also successfully introduced into practice and for which at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris he was awarded the gold medal. Later Hamann devoted a part of his time to the construction of textile machinery, cinematographic, medical, and anthropological tools, and miniature steam engines. At the beginning of the 1900s Hamann however recognized the disadvantages of fragmentation of his interests and decided to concentrate on the construction of calculating machines.

Hamann started to develop his first calculating machines in 1898. Initially, he had the intention of using the construction of Selling, which he knew perfectly, and the resulting construction was simple, but not reliable enough. Then he decided to use the stepped drum of Leibniz, developing two very good calculating machines—”Gauss” and “Berolina”. In 1903 he designed the so-called proportional system of levers (parallel racks that are proportionally displaced by a lever connected to the racks), which was later used in the famous calculator “Mercedes Euklid”.

In 1909 Hamann constructed a perfect differential engine, used in the calculation of Logarithmic-Trigonometrical Tables of Bauschinger and Peters.

After WWI Hamann worked for the company Berliner Deutschen Telephonwerke- und Kabelindustrie AG in Berlin as chief engineer, but it seems that he essentially ran a daughter company Hamann Rechenmaschinen. In 1922 he developed a new type of calculating mechanism, the so-called Schaltklinke (switching-latch-wheel), which for the first time allowed an automatic division. The first calculating machine equipped with this mechanism was the four-species calculator “Hamann Manus” from 1925.

Further improvements of Hamann were electric drive models, “Hamann, automatic Z, Y and X”. The “Hamann Automat V” worked the first time with an automatically truncated multiplication. The “Hamann Selecta” was equipped with two full keypads, the new multiplication has already allowed during the operation of the machine. Hamann’s other inventions include the improved computing machines “Hamann Selecta”, “Hamann Elma” and “Hamann Delta”, as “Hamann Selecta” has two full keyboards, allowing new multiplications to be performed during ongoing work steps of the machine.

In 1933 Hamann was appointed as an honorary doctor of the Technische Hochschule Berlin (now Technical University of Berlin).

Hamann was married to Hedwig Schindler (1872-1949), but the pair didn’t have children. Christel Hamann died on 9 June 1948, in Berlin.

Ensign Electric Calculating Machine is a highly developed, electrically driven adding and subtracting machine, particularly suited for multiplication (by repeated addition) and semi-automatic division (subtraction and division are done by complementary addition).

It was devised and patented by the young engineer from Illinois Emory Seymour Ensign (1878-1944), at the beginning of the 1900s. The first patent Ensign received in 1904 (U.S. patent №773632), as half of the patent is assigned to Frederick Hardenbergh, a selling agent of office equipment in New York. Later on, Ensign obtained seven other US patents for calculating devices, as well as similar patents in England, France, Canada, Austria, and Germany.

The calculating machine was manufactured from 1909 until 1924 by Ensign’s own company (Ensign Manufacturing Company was initially located in Waltham, Massachusetts, but later moved to Boston, then in 1918 moved again to Queens, New York), and was widely advertised during this time (see the nearby advertisement from 1913).

The price of the first models (from 1910) was $400 (Model E, 12 places for results), and $450 (Model F, 16 places for results). The 1924 price was $450 (Model 75), and $500 (Model 90). The machine was extremely cumbersome to operate, but in 1924 it was still available in two versions. It was sold only in the USA and in small numbers.

Ensign Electric Calculating Machine (see the lower image) is very heavy, with the cast iron case off, it still weighs some 30 kg, with overall measurements: 20 cm x 53 cm x 38 cm. On the exterior, there is a full keyboard, containing complementary digits for subtraction and division. At the right of the keyboard, there is a long adding key, further to the right is the division key, and finally the multiplication keys, marked 0 to 9. To the left of the keyboard is a key that allows the value entered on the keyboard to be locked in place. At the top left is the revolution counter, and above this, within the carriage, is the result mechanism with a sliding decimal marker and the carriage handle. The keys are self-correcting. The hook on the extreme left is the lever for clearing everything from the machine. The Ensign was advertised as the only machine giving proof of operation that automatically clears the keyboard, proof meter, and result dial by pulling the clearing lever once.

Addition: The first number on the keyboard is entered, then the long adding key to the right is depressed, and this transmits the number to the result mechanism. Any number of additional items may be added in this way. The added items are counted in the revolution counter. In order to set the machine to zero, the carriage must be placed to the extreme left. Then the small lever (to the left of the revolution counting mechanism) is quickly depressed into the machine, and both counting mechanisms are cleared. The keyboard may be divided so that two rows of items may be simultaneously added by the machine (for instance, debit and credit items).

Subtraction: The operation is the same as during addition, but the numbers are entered by using the small complementary digits, inscribed on the keys.

Multiplication: The multiplicand is entered on the keyboard. If it is intended to multiply it by 734 for example, the digit 4 of the multiplier keys is first pressed, then 3, and finally 7. The result can be read in the result mechanism. The multiplier can be read in the revolution counter and the multiplicand in the keyboard, which provides a check on the operation.

Division: Firstly the division key is pressed, then the zero of the multiplication keys is kept depressed until the carriage is positioned to the extreme right of the machine. Then the dividend is entered, and the long adding key is pushed, which transmits this amount into the result mechanism. The digit 1, which appears in the revolution counter because of the above action, is cleared, and the divisor minus 1 is set into the keyboard, by using the complementary digits, in such a way that the left-hand digits of the values are aligned. All the keys to the left of the divisor must be set to nines. An estimate is then made as to how many times the divisor is contained in the dividend: if, for example, the estimate is four, then the 4 key of the multiplication row is depressed, the machine commences operation, and the digit 4 appears in the revolution counter. The carriage is now shifted by one place to the left and the division is continued in the manner explained.
The result can be seen in the revolution counter, a repetition of this quotient on the left of the result mechanism, and the undivided remainder, if any, in the right portion of the result mechanism (separated from the other numbers by zeros).

Biography of Emory Ensign

Almost nothing is known about the inventor of this beautiful calculating machine—Emory Seymour Ensign. He was probably a descendant of the early settlers James (1606-1670) and Sarah Ensign, who came to Cambridge, Massachusetts from Great Britain, in 1633. Emory Seymour Ensign was born in Illinois, in 1878. Emory married Rose R. Ensign (nee Fisher) (b. 1881) and they had two daughters: Dorothy (b. 1905) and Barbara (b. 1911).

Besides the abovementioned numerous patents for calculating machines, Ensign was a holder of quite a few other patents for various devices like: automatic driving machine, pleasure railway, eyeleting machine, window lock, chip-receptacle, lock washer, paper clip, blade grinder, antitheft plate for automobiles, valve cap for tires, antiglare screen, control system for refrigerator, etc. According to the patent applications, he lived in Boston, Mass. (1904); Cambridge, Mass. (1905); Cambridgeport, Mass. (1906); Newtonville, Mass. (1908); Brighton, Mass. (1914); East Orange, NJ (1918); Rockford, Illinois (1921); New Haven, Conn. (1928). Emory Seymour Ensign died in 1944.

In 1903, the German clock manufacturer from Schwarzwäld—Bäuerle Uhrenfabrik (Clock Factory), Sankt Georgen, launched his adding machine Peerless, which soon became quite popular and won gold medals at exhibitions in St. Louis (World’s Fair of 1904), Liège (1905), and Milan (1906).

The founder of the company—Mathias Bäuerle (1838-1916) from St. Georgen was in the clockmaker business from 1863, when he founded a small workshop, which later evolved into Uhrenfabrik St. Georgen. Initially, the company manufactured home, wall clocks with wooden boards, but later specialized in all types of clocks. By 1900 the company’s clocks received several awards and the monthly production reached over 5000 watches and clocks, mainly for export.

Mathias Bäuerle had four sons—Tobias, Fridolin, Christian, and Mathias, and at least three of them, Christian, Tobias, and Mathias, were involved in his father’s business. Namely, Tobias Bäuerle was the main driving force behind the new machine and later he founded his own company—Tobias Bäuerle GMBH, to continue the traditional family business with clocks and the new one—calculating machines.

From 1918 the company worked together with the Austrian company Herzstark and Co., the manufacturer of Austria calculating machine. Bäuerle produced the raw works, and Herzstark added a keyboard, automatic divider device, and motor drive.

The company was in the business with calculating machines until 1964, producing the Peerless (and modifications Peerless Rapid, with special gear for multiplication, and Peerless Baby, a portable version) and Badenia (many models) calculating machines, and still exists, but now is manufacturing folding and inserting systems.

Peerless and Badenia machines are based on the stepped drum mechanism of Gottfried Leibniz and the first Peerless is almost the same as the machines of Thomas de Colmar and Arthur Burkhardt, but Tobias Bäuerle immediately began the development of improvements.

The original Peerless from 1903 was a slider model in a wooden box. Dimensions (LxWxH): 34 x 18 x 12 cm (base), weight 6 kg. The second model from next year (see the photo below) was with a cast iron case.

The Peerless Rapid model (see the photo below), introduced in 1907, featured an auxiliary device (called rapid), managed by a crank, to speed up the multiplication: one could set the multiplicand by the moving of the crank so that only one revolution of the main (right) crank was necessary for multiplication. This mechanism simplified the multiplication of large numbers, but introduced high effort and stress into the mechanics.

In 1908, a duplex Peerless with two counters. In 1910, an adjustable control station, a reset key, and a motor drive. In 1915 a keyboard input mechanism was developed.

The Peerless Baby (see the photo below) was a portable model. Dimensions are 32 x 16 x 9 cm, weight 4.5 kg.

In 1921 was launched the model Badenia, with the same internal mechanism, but with a keyboard input mechanism, instead of sliders.

Many models of Badenia (and EMBEE Badenia) were produced until 1964 when the production of mechanical calculating machines was stopped.

Biography of Mathias Bäuerle

Mathias (Matthias) Bäuerle was born on Friday, 25 October 1838 in Stockwald, a village near Sankt Georgen, Schwarzwald, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. He was the son of the watchmaker Tobias Bäuerle (1812-1850) and Barbara Kammerer-Bäuerle (1814-1888). Barbara (born 2 Nov. 1814 to Matthias Kammerer, a watchmaker, and Elisabetha Kieninger-Kammerer) married Tobias Bäuerle on 15 Aug. 1837 and they had seven children (two of them died in infancy).

Tobias Bäuerle (Baeuerle) was born on 28 March 1812 in Stockwald, Sankt Georgen, as a son of the watchmaker Philipp Jakob Bäuerle (1770-1837) and Barbera Hettich (1771-1816). Philipp Jakob was a brother of Matthias Bäuerle (1762-1816), the father of the watchmaker Johann Georg Bäuerle.

Tobias Bäuerle died only 38 years old on 8 May 1850 in Stockwald, Sankt Georgen, from a lung disease that made him bedridden and unable to work two years before his death. Barbara and the children were completely broken and forced to sell the entire household. The boys Matthias, Tobias, and Christian were hired as herdsmen.

Mathias was too young when his father died, so he didn’t manage to learn the watchmaking trade from him, thus he went to his mother’s family in Stockwald (Barbara’s father Matthias Kammerer (1784-1869) and brother Matthias Kammerer (1817-1898), were also watchmakers), and learned watchmaking there. After the necessary time as a journeyman, Mathias married and soon (in 1863) established his own business and founded a watchmaker’s workshop in a small house in Ursprung bei Peterzell near Sankt Georgen. The clock factory Uhrenfabrik Sankt Georgen later developed from this small workshop. His brother Tobias Bäuerle (1 Mar 1841-26 Feb 1914), later founded the Tobias T. Bäuerle & Söhne watch factory. Interestingly, Tobias Bäuerle also had two sons (Christian and Tobias Bäuerle Jr.), who inherited his business.

Mathias Bäuerle married his cousin Ana Dorothea Kammerer (b. 1842) on 27 February 1860 in Sankt Georgen. From this marriage, 14 children were born, at least four of them were sons—Tobias, Fridolin, Christian, and Mathias, and at least three of them, Christian (1860-1918), Tobias (1863-1933), and Mathias (1865-1935) were involved in his father’s business. Tobias Bäuerle (Junior) was the most business-oriented among them and after the death of his father, he continued the traditional family business with clocks and the new one—calculating machines.

Matthias Bäuerle died on Sunday, 13 February 1916, in Stockwald, Sankt Georgen, at the age of 77.

Charles Wales, a genius of mechanical motion and a native of Maryland, who lived in the early 1900s in Detroit, filled his first patent application for an adding machine in September 1902, and when in 1903 the US patent No. 745539 was granted, he decided to establish a company to manufacture the device (Wales was a remarkable inventor, holder of more than 40 US and many foreign patents for calculating devices.) Thus the Wales Adding Machine Co. was founded in Detroit and soon began production of the remarkable series of adding-listing machines.

In the first decade of the 20th century the adding machines of Wales Adding Machine Co. (the company changed its name to Adder Machine Company and moved the manufacture from Detroit to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in 1906), together with the Comptometer of Baldwin and Dalton of Hopkins, became a strong competitor of Burroughs. Actually, Charles Wales soon left the company that bore his name to work for the Invention Department of Burroughs (he remained there three years, until 1912, but later in 1920 again worked for Burroughs), and patented a visible printing mechanism used in their machines. Wales later designed the White (known also as Federal), a cheap and beautiful adding machine, which was manufactured by the Colt Fire Arms Manufacturing Company of Hartford.

This success of the innovative Wales machines was due to the advanced construction, “visible” printing device above the keyboard, and the variety of models, launched to the market. At one point, more than 40 different models of varying carriage width, number of places, and auxiliary keys existed, but in 1923, the line was consolidated into two main classifications—the large machines, and the small portable models.

The Wales Adding Machine is a full keyboard machine with an integrated printer. It is a quite massive device, with dimensions 38 x 50 x 25 cm, and a weight of 29 kg. The first patent for the machine was granted in 1903. The advertising campaign started in 1908. The 1914 prices started at $175.

The Wales machine was extremely popular with banks and other companies. In 1916 brochures are listed over 2000 banks using Wales machines and 54 companies (not all of them banks) that were using from 5 to 83 each.

During the 1920s the machine was sold successfully in two main varieties—large machines and portable models. All the models featured one or two calculating mechanisms. During the calculations, the operator first enters the number from the keyboard, then using the right lever the number is printed and added to the partial sum, and the keys are returned to the initial position. There are additional keys for special operations. The portable machines are a smaller variant of the bigger, featuring almost the same functionality.

The Wales Adding Machine is a quite fancy device, featuring beautiful beveled glass sides. That’s why some people call it The “Mac” of Early 20th Century Machines 🙂

James Lewis Dalton (1866-1926) was a successful businessman and amateur mechanic from Poplar Bluff, Butler county, Mo. He was the owner of the largest department store in the Midwest, a member of the Missouri legislature, and District Deputy Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge of the State of Missouri. How this venerable businessman and a public figure entered the world of mechanical calculators?

In the early 1900s, the famous adding machines constructors William and Hubert Hopkins desperately needed money in order to manufacture and put on the market their inventions. So in December 1901, William Hopkins went to Poplar Bluff and there succeeded in interesting Dalton and others of that city in financing his enterprise. The result was that a contract was entered into by and between the Hopkins brothers and Dalton and his associates by which the latter agreed to furnish $2500, a part of which was to go to the former and a part of it was to be expended in the manufacture of the first machine, so as to demonstrate its practicability.

Shortly after this agreement was made the Hopkins brothers built the machine in St. Louis, using a part of the $2500 for that purpose. In January 1902 Dalton went to St. Louis, and Hubert Hopkins show him the prototype of an advanced 10-key adding machine. Dalton was impressed by this machine, and in June 1902 additional sum of $1250 was put up by Dalton. In consideration of money granted, the Hopkins brothers were to assign to Dalton a half interest to a company thereafter to be organized. The machine was completed in September 1902, and in December 1902 the Addograph Manufacturing Company was founded (50000$ shares), half of the shares owned by the Hopkins brothers, the other half owned by Dalton. Dalton was the president, and Hubert Hopkins was the director.

However, in 1903 Hubert Hopkins began an unfair game and secretly sold his stock in the Addograph Co. to American Arithmometer Co., the manufacturer of the famous Burroughs Adding Machine, and with additional shares it had bought, gave it control of the Addograph Co (for this and for other similar cases later on American Arithmometer will be sued for “Conspiracy, Attempt to Monopolize and Monopoly”). As the patent application for the machine, filled in January 1903 (see the US patent No. 1039130), was assigned to Addograph Co., this action threatened the investments of Dalton. To regain control, Dalton paid to American Arithmometer $40000 for the stock (Hopkins had sold this stock for only $5000, and this prove to be a very bad decision, because using his patent Dalton will become a millionaire later). Thus Dalton was granted the exclusive right to make and sell the machines, which he did, founding in July 1903 a new company—the Adding Typewriter Company in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. The company later changed its name to Dalton Adding Machine Company.

Since 1904 Dalton gradually turned the store over to his son and others and devoted his entire time to the adding machine, engaged as a “president, general manager, factory manager, timekeeper, paymaster, bookkeeper, and chief salesman”, always working at least 14, and sometimes more, hours daily. The first factory was in a side room and during that period the three or four mechanics who built the first machines watched Dalton leave on a sales trip with great interest, because, if he didn’t make a sale they didn’t get paid. But after a few years, aided by the capital of friends, and a refusal to become discouraged and quit, success came his way. In 1909 the company relocated to a purpose-built factory building (see the upper image). The machine began to sell on the market and 200 sales offices were ultimately opened up in different parts of the world, and sales ran up to one million worth a month.

The first model was released in 1907, and after an extensive advertising campaign in 1909 it became a market hit. Earlier models had glass inserts to allow customers to view the gears actually calculating the answers. By the 1920s over 150 models of Dalton Adding Machines had been designed and over 50000 machines were sold. In 1915 the price was 125$, while the 1926 price was $100. In 1919 it was stated that the US government had over 3000 Dalton machines.

A full description of the operation of the Dalton Adding Machine can be found in the Dalton Instruction Book.

Many people might consider it humiliating to start out selling adding machines with a heavy sample bag packed under his arm and interviewing the same people whose merchandise purchases had helped swell his former business to the $750000 mark. Perhaps it was hard but James Dalton did it just the same. During his lifetime, he managed to progress from a $ 12-a-month clerk in a hardware store to the presidency of the Dalton Adding Machine Company, a ten million dollars concern manufacturing upwards of 60000 machines a year and with agencies throughout the civilized world employing 2500 persons.

After the death of James Dalton on 11 January 1926, Dalton Adding Machine Co. merged with other companies to become Remington Rand in 1927.

Biography of James Dalton

James Lewis Dalton (Jimmie) was born on 28 December 1866, in Dalton Farm (a homestead near Ponder, Ripley county, Missouri, then managed by his grandfather Elijah Dalton). He was the son of William Marion Dalton and his second wife Mary Caroline (Myatt) Dalton (b. 9 October 1838 in Dickson, Tennessee—d. 12 April 1890 in Ripley, Missouri). James was named after his uncle, James Lewis Dalton (1835-1924), an energetic and thorough man of business, a merchant miller, and a farmer of Dalton, Arkansas.

William “Billy” Marion Dalton was born in Missouri on 30 May 1834, the second (of seven) children of Elijah Dalton (1807-1884), a farmer and owner of a water mill, and Zillah Gaines (1810-1855). William Dalton was the first postmaster of Dalton, Arkansas. On 18 November 1855, he married Mary Caroline Myatt and they had nine children (Zilpha, Zillah, Rufus, Zimriah, Mary Elizabeth, James Lewis, Sarah, Lively, and Ascenith). He passed away on 7 September 1873 in Ripley, Missouri. In 1875 Mary Caroline re-married Asebel (Asel) Arnold and they had two children.

The life story of James Lewis Dalton would be appropriate subject matter for a “rags-to-riches” story. He rose from the position of a poorly educated backwoods boy to become the owner of the largest department store in the Middle West and head of one of the world’s largest business machine manufacturing plants, devoted to the manufacture of the Dalton Calculating Machine.

When a small child, living with his mother and other children, Jimmie was constantly engaged in experimenting with machinery. An older member of the family once said that James was “all the time fooling with wheels.” In 1880 at age 14, he made an exact model of his mother’s sewing machine in wood, and surprisingly it worked.

As a boy, Jimmie attended the country schools near his home. Some of these schools were at Bakerden, Warm Springs, Doniphan, and Dalton. In the early 1880s, he was educated at the LaCrosse Collegiate Institute in Izard County, AR. Later Jimmie (at the age of 16) taught school for a time at Dalton, Bakerden, and seven months at Elm Store, assisted by his sister, Neeta.

In 1884, when he was 18, Jimmie decided to go forth into the world and seek his fortune. With $60 which he obtained from a bale of cotton which he grew in the hills of what is now Baker township, Randolph county, he set forth. He first went to St. Louis. Finding no job he went on to Chicago. Finding nothing to his liking he came back to St. Louis where he obtained a job in the old William Barr Dry Goods Company at a salary of $5 per week. After working there a short time he came back to Doniphan, where he went to work in a hardware store of his future wife’s Clara relatives (hardware store of J.R. and E.W. Wright) at $12 per month and board. He was soon made a partner and later became the sole owner. He built this business up to where he saw greater possibilities in the larger town of Poplar Bluff, to which town he moved in 1885. It grew to be the largest department store in the whole Midwest and in one year the retail sales reached $765,000.

At the age of 22, while living in Doniphan, Dalton was elected Master of the Masonic Lodge (just like his grandfather Elijah and his uncle James Lewis). At 26 he was District Deputy Grand Master of the State of Missouri. Dalton was the first Republican ever elected to the State Legislature of Missouri from Ripley county.

In 1904 Dalton turned the store over to his son and others (although he retained a controlling interest in the concern) and devoted his entire time to the adding machine. Soon the machine began to sell on the market and 200 sales offices were ultimately opened up in different parts of the world, and sales ran up to $1,000,000 worth a month.

James L. Dalton was a brilliant speaker and writer, the recipient of requests from leading chambers of commerce and other civic clubs throughout the country to address their conventions and banquets. In his only effort to seek public office, Dalton was elected to the Missouri legislature by a large majority of votes in 1900.

On 25 October 1887 James Lewis Dalton married Clara Beatrice Wright (b. 27 Feb. 1869—d. 12 Dec. 1940), the sister of his business partners Wright. To his union were born four children: Grover Wright (1889-1959), Charles Lewis (1891-1926), Phoebe Clara (1893-1970), and Mary (1899-1979).

James Lewis Dalton died of acute appendicitis on 11 January 1926, and was buried in Poplar Bluff City Cemetery.