Category: Timeline Stories

In the middle of the 19^th century, Samuel S. Young of Eaton, Ohio, USA, patented three simple (and quite similar) calculating devices. The first patent (US patent No. 6602 from 24 July 1849) was for а machine for adding figures. The second patent was for a machine for calculation of interest (US pat. No. 8329 from 2 Sep. 1851). The third patent (US pat. No. 21921 from 26 Oct. 1858) was for an arithmetical proof rule.

It seems an adding device, based on the first patent of Young (see the drawing of US patent No. 6602 below), was manufactured and became rather popular in the 1850s in the USA. According to (most probably exaggerated) advertising, more than 30,000 examples of this device had been sold by 1857. The patent model survived to the present and it is kept in the National Museum of American History, Washington (see the upper image).

Let’s see an excerpt of a sales letter from a certain W. M. Richardson, a sales agent:
I am agent for the sale of Young’s Patent Adding Tablet a very ingenious machine for adding up columns of figures, to any amount with accuracy and rapidity, without mental labour, they are very generally used by Bankers, Merchants, Storekeepers & Accountants, as evidence of their popularity, over thirty thousand have been sold already. It will be sent by mail on receipt of One dollar, or one dozen for Nine Dollars.

It was a wooden device, with overall measurements: 7 cm x 9.8 cm x 15.6 cm.

The simple adder with a frame holds seven strips of wood. Each strip has 19 holes on it. The ten right holes are numbered from 0 to 9. The nine remaining holes are unnumbered, but the wood is colored green. To the sides of each strip, the numbers 1 to 9 are written on the frame. The left part of the strip is covered by an upper piece on the frame.

The second calculating instrument of Young (Rule for Calculating Interest) is similar to the first, a wood and paper device with overall measurements of 0.8 cm x 35.4 cm x 4.1 cm (see the image below).

This patent model has a rectangular wooden frame with five grooves, each of which holds a bar (made from a different kind of wood) that slides crosswise. Two flat wooden pieces cover much of the bars on the left side, with a gap between them. Each bar has a set of 12 evenly spaced holes that are numbered from 11 down to 1 (the “0” holes are not numbered). Each bar also is indented at the top to hold a slip of paper that slides under the top of the machine. There are 11 further, unnumbered, holes to the right of each slip of paper. Setting up a number on the rods (to represent an amount of money or a length of time) reveals a number on the paper slips that represents an amount of tax or interest.

The third patent (pat. №21921 from 1858) was for an arithmetical proof-rule, a device, similar to the first and second calculating instruments of Young.

Simple calculating devices, similar to the above described, remained popular till the middle of the 20^th century, for example, later devices of Thomas Fowler and Clarence Locke.

Biography of Samuel Young

Samuel S. Young, the son of Alexander and Sarah Young, was born on 28 March 1809, in Butler County, Ohio. The US Census for 1850 indicates that S. S. Young of Eaton, Ohio, 40 years old that year, was living with his wife (Young married on 13 February 1834, to Eliza Jane Hardy) and two children. His occupation was given as “gardener.” Apparently by 1860 Young had moved to the nearby town of Washington and he is listed in the Census as a “horticulturalist” by occupation. In 1864 and 1865 Young was working in the real estate and rental business in Cincinnati, Ohio, along with one of Red Lion’s and Warren County’s most distinguished and prosperous citizens, merchant, Postmaster, and match manufacturer—William H. Ballard (1817-1892).

Samuel S. Young died on 8 January 1885 (aged 75), in Bonnieville, Hart County, Kentucky, and was buried in Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati.

On 26 September 1854, a certain Aaron L. Hatfield of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, took out a US patent №11726 (see the patent of Hatfield) for a machine for adding numbers. The adding machine of Hatfield, the inventor and manufacturer of adding machines who flourished in the middle of the nineteenth century, was in production for some years by the inventor himself (see the lower photo), and several devices survived to the present time.

The calculator of Hatfield (see the lower drawing from the US patent №11726) was made of wood (mahogany), iron, and brass, with dimensions 2.5 cm x 24.5 cm x 14.5 cm. It was an adder with carry and consisted of a series of circular metallic disks having numbers stamped thereon, so arranged, in connection with springs, that by the alternative movement of a lever, any number of figures, from 1 to 10000 or more, maybe correctly and easily added together before the eye.

The adding device is mounted on a mahogany base plate in the shape of a handheld mirror. There is a hole at the end of the handle for hanging the machine.

The calculating mechanism consists of three, concentric brass discs of different diameters, that are mounted on top of each other and to the mirror portion of the mahogany base.

The largest disc is fixed (glued) to the mahogany base, and it has the numbers from 1 to 99 indicated around the edge (there also is a blank space for zero). The middle and upper discs rotate about a central pivot, which has a smaller pin attached to it that holds the discs together. The middle disc is divided into 100 parts around the edge, with the parts numbered from 100 to 9900 (again there is a blank division). The top disc has the numbers from 1 to 99 around the edge, as well as a blank. Next to each digit of the disc, there is a small sunken tooth in the disc. A hole in the arm allows one to see numbers on the discs.

To use the instrument, the operator sets up thousands by rotating the middle disc. There is an iron handle at the very end of a crossbar (attached to the common center of the discs), with which the operator rotates the bar. To add one or two-digit numbers, the operator moves the arm counterclockwise so that it is over the desired number on the outer rim. Then, rotating clockwise back to zero, a spring-ratchet attached to the arm engages a tooth on the inner disc and rotates it through the number setup. When the inner disc goes a full revolution, a carry mechanism advances the middle wheel one unit.

There is also a thin iron bar coming off of the side of the crossbar. The other end of this bar fits in the engraved wedge-shaped grooves around the inner circumference of the topmost brass disc. This bar permits the crossbar to be rotated only counterclockwise.

Biography of Aaron Hatfield

Aaron “Aron” L. Hatfield was born in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania in 1819, the son of Peter (1790-1846), and Anna Hatfield (-1871). Aaron had a younger brother, Lewis (1834-1879).

Aaron Hatfield is listed in the 1850 US Census as still living in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. By then he was 31 years old, worked as a watchmaker and jeweler, and had a wife—Susanna (Kleckner) Hatfield (1826-1877) and two children. In 1856 Hatfields moved to Clyde, Ohio, and the next US Census of 1860 lists Aaron L. Hatfield as 40 years old, born in Pennsylvania, and living in Green Springs, Sandusky, Ohio. By then he worked as a photographer (ambrotypist). No family is listed. The 1880 US Census lists Aaron L. Hatfield, 61 years old, widowed, and a watchmaker, living in Constantine, St. Joseph County, Michigan. Aaron and Susan had several children, but most of them died young: Sallie Ann (died in 1854), Zachary T., and Anthony Kleckner (1848-1857), later they had a daughter, who survived— Ida A. (1855-1941).

Aaron Hatfield died on 4 December 1898, in Three Rivers, Michigan, where he held a small jewelry and musical instruments store. Last years of his life he was living a secluded life above his store.

In addition to the patent for the above-mentioned machine for adding numbers, Aaron Hatfield took out several other US patents. The US patent №103327 was for an improvement in pruning shears and was taken out in 1870, when Hatfield was living in Clyde, Ohio. The next patent №143759, was for an improvement in pumps and was taken out in 1873, when Hatfield was still in Clyde. The last patent №199705, was for an improvement in bag holders and was taken out in 1878, when he was living in Constantine.

In the middle of 1843 the brilliant French mechanic and watchmaker Jean-Paul Garnier (best known for providing railway stations in France, Argentina and Romania with station clocks), filed a patent application to the Department of Agriculture and Commerce for a mechanical calculating machine (France was one of the first major industrialized countries to adopt legislation on patents in 1791.) The six-years patent for a simple adding device was granted on 30 October 1843 (see Brevet d’invention No. 15915).

The calculating machine of Garnier (see the patent drawing on the lower image) seems to have a simple and reliable construction and a watch-like result mechanism (dials). Unfortunately, nothing (besides the patent description) for this device survived our time.

Interestingly, Jean-Paul Garnier started his career as a watchmaker in 1820 in the workshop of the famous French watchmakers of the 18th and 19th centuries—Lépine (Lépine, Philibert and Jean-Antoine were also the creators of an early calculating machine, see machine arithmetique of Lépine).

Biography of Jean-Paul Garnier

Jean-Paul Garnier (known usually as Paul Garnier), was born on 16 November 1801 in Épinal dans les Vosges (the Lorraine region), in a poor family of musicians. Jean-Paul was forced to begin his professional career as ten years old boy as an apprentice in a printing shop, then he completed a locksmith apprenticeship in Épinal, and finally, he became a watchmaker apprentice in Luxeuil-les-Bains.

Garnier’s passion and competence for mechanics secured him a place in 1820 in the workshop of the famous watchmakers of the time—Lépine (Lépine, Philibert, and Jean-Antoine were also the creators of an early calculating machine), in Paris, then in the workshop the famous French clock-maker Antide Janvier (1751–1835). Five years later he started as an independent watchmaker, setting up his own workshop at Rue Taitbout 8.

Paul Garnier was one of the most skillful masters of his time in electric clocks (he first applied electric transmission to clocks in France in 1847 and in 1851 he received a gold medal at the Great Exhibition in London) and has numerous inventions in the field of watchmaking. Let’s mention some:
• Free escapement and winding constant force (presented to the Academy of Sciences in 1826)
• Precision regulator to astronomical data (presented at the Universal Exhibition of Besançon)
• Sphygmometer (an instrument used to view with the human eye movement of arterial blood)
• Travel clocks or car accessible to everyone
• Revolutions counter
• Device that indicates the exact time of passage of the train station

Paul Garnier is famous for providing all stations in France, Argentina and Romania with station clocks. Garnier gave his entire collection of watches and clocks in the Louvre museum, where there is nowadays a room named after Paul Garnier. He is considered an important watchmaker and holder of various patents, including for escapement systems and other clock devices. He developed the Garnier escapement named after him in 1829 and received a patent for it in 1830.

Paul Garnier was a member of the French Society of Civil Engineers and also the Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He was a jury member at the Besançon Universal Timepiece Exhibition. Many medals are awarded to him at world exhibitions including his work on electromagnetic telegraph clocks. In 1861, he was chosen by the French government to make proposals for the development and influence of the watch industry.

Garnier signed himself Paul Garnier, Horloger & Mecanicien a Paris, Horloger Mecanicien de la Marine and Horloger du Roi (clockmaker of the King).

Paul Garnier was married to Mélanie Abel Duval and they had two daughters–Virginie (1830-1912), and Léonide (1831-1908), and a son—Paul-Casimir (6 March 1834–13 July 1916). Paul-Casimir Garnier (see the nearby photo) was an engineer and officier de la légion d’honneur, worked in the business of his father, and later became his successor together with his nephew Paul-Pierre Blot-Garnier (1871-1938).

Jean-Paul Garnier died in Paris on 14 February 1869 and was buried at Cimetière du Père-Lachaise.

The foundation of the calculating machine industry in Germany, one of the leading industries of its kind for several decades afterward, was laid in the second half of the 1870s by two young German engineers—Kurt Dietzschold (1852-1922) and Arthur Burkhardt (1857–1918), in Glashütte (a small town in Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge, which is considered as the birthplace of the German watchmaking industry, internationally known for the manufacture of high-quality watches since 1851).

In 1873 Kurt Dietzschold, then a student in Mechanical Engineering at Technischen Hochschule in Karlsruhe, visited the Vienna World Exhibition, where he saw and was fascinated by Thomas de Colmar’s calculating machine. Two years later, in 1875, already a mechanical engineer, Dietzschold decided to create his own calculating machine, with a calculating mechanism based not on the stepped drum of Gottfried Leibnitz (as it was the calculator of Colmar), but on a relatively new type of mechanism—so-called Schaltwerk mit Schaltklinke (rear derailleur with switching latch, or switching pawl). The switching latch mechanism is described first time by Leupold in 1727 and was later used very successfully in Hamann’s machines.

In 1876 Dietzschold was invited to come to Glashütte and to work for the newly founded company Strasser & Rohde, a workshop for the construction of computing machinery, precision equipment, and pendulum clocks (later in 1878 Dietzschold became a co-owner and head of the company). In Glashütte Dietzschold continued his work on the calculating machine, and by 1877 he managed to produce three copies of his machine (made by Lange & Söhne watchmaking workshop) and gave up one of them to the Royal Prussian Statistical Office for testing. However, the statistical office found that the machine did not operate to their full satisfaction. That’s why Dietzschold asked for help from another engineer and one of his most gifted university schoolmates from Karlsruhe—Gotthilf Robert Arthur Burkhardt, who was then serving his time in the army.

Arthur Burkhardt came to Glashütte in October 1878, but the next year 1879 his friend Kurt Dietzschold decided to accept the proposal to become a director of Österreichischen Uhrmacherschule in Karlstein and left the town. It seems he never returned to manufacturing calculating machines but kept his theoretical interest (e.g. in 1882 he published a very good article on calculating machines). Two copies of his machine still exist today, one in Vienna (Uhrenmuseum) and another in Dresden (Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon), and one very good replica in Arithmeum Museum, Bonn (see the upper image).

The calculating machine of Kurt Dietzschold (see its description) has eight digital places in the setting mechanism and 16 digital places in the result mechanism. The dimensions are: 17 x 48 x 12 cm, weight is 9.8 kg.

Biography of Kurt Dietzschold

Kurt (sometimes also written “Curt”) Dietzschold was born in Dresden on 25 March 1852. His father worked for Royal Saxon Railway. After graduating from secondary school, Kurt studied mechanical engineering at the Aachener Polytechnikum, then completed his studies at the Karlsruher Polytechnikum, where he graduated as a mechanical engineer in 1875. In 1876 Dietzschold worked in the Shipbuilding Institute Schick in Dresden, then moved to Glashütte, to work for the newly founded company Strasser & Rohde, a workshop for the construction of computing machinery, precision equipment, and pendulum clocks (later in March 1878 Dietzschold became a co-owner and head of the company).

In 1879 the Austrian government was looking for a new director for the Karlstein Watchmaking School (Österreichischen Uhrmacherschule in Karlstein an der Thaya). Consulted by the government, the professor at the Vienna University of Technology, Leopold Ritter zu Hauffe, recommended the young engineer and manufacturer Kurt Dietzschold to this position on the recommendation of Karl Moritz Großmann, a watchmaker and businessman from Glashütte. On 15 August 1879, Dietzschold became director of the Karlstein Watchmaking School, and kept the position until his retirement in 1903, because of problems with his eyes.

Kurt Dietzschold was the author of many articles and books in the areas of watchmaking and calculating machines, which had a great influence on German watchmaking schools. He was a holder of Austrian Franz-Josefs-Orden and an honorary member of several watchmakers associations.

Kurt Dietzschold died completely blind on 5 May 1922, in Krems an der Donau.

In the middle 1870s, the French engineer Henry Pottin patented the first key-set crank-operated machine and made the first attempt to record the items in addition. The invention of Pottin implemented two of the prime principles of the first workable recording adders; one is the depressable key-set feature and the other is the recording of the numerical items. The machine of Pottin was the first known depressable key-set crank-operated machine made to add columns of figures and one of the first machines in which an attempt was made to print the numerical items as they were added (after Müller, Babbage, and Barbour).

The French inventor Henry Pottin was a holder of more than 20 patents in the USA, Canada, France, Great Britain, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany from 1875 until 1911, mainly for cash registers and other recording and registering machines, but also for other devices like: a billiard table (US patent No. 175495 from 1875), which was prized on Philadelphia Centennial International Exposition 1876, weighing-machine, vending machine, etc.

Almost nothing is known about Henry Pottin. From the patent applications is clear, that he was a civil engineer, and spent most of his life in Paris, France. In his first patent from 1875, he was specified as living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the other patents, he was specified as a French citizen and resident of Paris. There was a good French history and genre painter, portraitist, engraver, and lithographer known as Henry Pottin, born Louis Aimé Henri Pottin (1820-1864), with a proper age to be his father (or uncle?).

First Pottin’s patent for cash resister is the Great Britain patent Nr. GB187702076 from 28 May 1877, but we will examine the device, described in his first US patent for such device (US312014 from 1885), see the patent  US312014.

There are four large wheels shown, marked B. These wheels are what may be called the type-wheels, although they also serve as indicator wheels for registering cash sales. The type figures are formed by a series of needles fixed on the face of the wheels.

The means employed for presenting the proper type figure for printing and likewise the indicator figures to indicate the amount set up in each denominational order was as follows:

Referring to Fig. 1, it will be noted that to each type-wheel is geared a spring-actuated segmental rack marked D, which, as shown in the drawing, is in contact with a pin marked i, which protrudes from the side of the depressed number (9) key.

The normal position of the rack D is indicated in dotted lines showing the next higher sector which has not been displaced by key depression.

Each key, as will be noted in Fig. 7, is provided with one of the pins i, which is normally out of the path of the lug j, as the racks D, drop forward; but when any key is depressed the pin is presented in the path of the lug j, and stops further forward action of the rack.

It will be noted that the arrangement of the keys is such as will allow progressively varying degrees of action to the segmental racks D. This variation, combined with the geared relation of the type-wheels and racks is equivalent to a tenth of a rotation of the type-wheel for each successive key in the order of their arrangement from 1 to 9.

The means provided for holding the segmental racks D, at normal, also serves to hold a key of the same order depressed, and consists of a pivoted spring-pressed latch-frame marked E (see Figs. 7 and 8).

With such a combination, the depression of keys in the several orders will unlatch the segmental racks, and the racks, through the tension of their actuating springs, will turn the wheels and present a type corresponding to the numerical value of each key depressed.

A hand lever, marked R, located on the left side of the machine provides power for printing the items. Another hand lever, marked J, serves to restore the segmental racks, type-wheels, and the keys to normal, and through the cooperation of the lever R, adds the items to the totalizer numeral wheels, which are shown in Fig. 1 as the numbered wheels marked v.

The paper is supplied from a roll mounted on a hinged platen frame P¹ supported in its normal position by a spring P³. The paper passes under the roller P, which acts as a platen for the impression of the type. A shaft Q, passing under the frame P¹ is fast and rigidly connected on the left-hand side of the machine with the hand lever R, and acts as a pivot for the said lever and by means of lateral projections q, serves when the lever R is operated to engage the frame P¹ and depresses it until the needle types have pricked the numerical items through the paper.

A slit in the casing provided means for printing the item on a separate piece of paper or bill.

Although there is no means shown by which the paper is fed after an item is printed, it is claimed in the specification that the well-known means for such feeding may be employed. The actuating lever J referred to, is connected by a ratchet and geared action with the shaft F*, so that a revolution is given the said shaft each time the lever is operated.

To the shaft F, (see Fig. 1) is attached a series of arms H, one for each order, which, as the shaft revolves in the direction of the arrow, engages a lug marked I, on the segmental racks D, thus rocking the segments back to normal, turning the type wheels with them.

The return of the segment racks D, causes the back of the latch tooth f¹, (see Fig. 8) to engage the latch tooth f, of the latch bar E, camming it out of engagement with the keys so that any key that has been set will return by means of its own spring.

The total or accumulator numeral wheels are connectable with the type or indicating wheels B by an engaging and disengaging gear motion set up by the combined action of the hand levers R and J, which first cause such gear engagement, and then, through the return of the type wheels to zero, turn the accumulator wheels, thus transferring the amount of the item set upon the type wheels to the accumulator wheels.

Reynold B. Johnson (1906–1998) was a remarkable American inventor, one of the IBM company’s most prolific inventors, specializing in electromechanical devices. He was the owner of more than 90 patents and is said to be the “father” of the hard disk drive, automatic test scoring equipment, microphonograph technology, a type of videotape, and talking books.

Johnson received a bachelor of science degree in (science) education administration in 1929 at the University of Minnesota and obtained his first job at Ironwood High School on the Michigan Peninsula, where he taught mathematics and science. Soon he got a strong conviction that measurement of educational performance was critical to teaching, and thus started his career as an inventor in the early 1930s.

Johnson’s Test Scoring Machine

Having entered teaching with those strong convictions about testing, Rey soon began to review his and fellow teachers’ textbooks and their quizzes with the belief that there must be a way to automate the grading task. His first experiments and models made use of holes that students could punch out on perforated test sheets combined with an electrical contact system that switched on lights where answers had been correctly identified. While carrying this idea to application in a potential product, with the investment of much time and effort, he suddenly remembered that pencil marks are conductive and discarded the first path in favor of a better approach using pencil marks to identify the correct answer on the test sheet. This experience of a better idea making obsolete a good idea underlies his subsequent insistence that all possible solutions to a problem must be examined to find the best solution. Critical to his “machine” in its earliest stages was the use of close tolerance, separate answer sheets where pencil marks could be read by machine within wide tolerances for the resistance of the pencil marks themselves. Unfortunately, in 1933 Johnson lost his job as the school was scaled back to a depression-era budget. The next many months were hard times even though his ideas had attracted national attention. His efforts were assisted by his fiancée and a teaching colleague, Beatrice (Bea), who wrote a newspaper story about the device.

Fortunately, Professor Benjamin Wood at Columbia University, was a proponent of automatic testing and had been working with IBM, unsuccessfully, to design a machine for this purpose. Johnson knew of Wood’s interest in testing and was able to provide a description and a model for him. Wood informed IBM’s president Watson that the concepts were sound. Rey and Bea were brought to New York City for the evaluation of his ideas and his model. After weeks of discussion, and while Watson was on vacation, Johnson was informed that an analysis showed that his concepts were not acceptable. While Johnson prepared to demonstrate that the analysis was incorrect, Wood took a different route and called Watson to inform him that IBM was about to make a mistake. Shortly thereafter, IBM purchased Johnson’s invention and hired the unemployed high school teacher as a senior engineer in Endicott, New York. The test scoring machine, the IBM 805, was announced in 1937 (some 1000 were produced during the years).

Tests to be scored by the machine were answered by marking spaces on separate answer sheets, which had a capacity of 750 response positions, or 150 five-choice or 300 true-false questions. The answer sheets were dropped into the 805 for processing.

Inside the 805 was a contact plate with 750 contacts (electric fingers) corresponding to the 750 answer positions. Each contact allowed one unit of current to flow when a pencil mark was pressed against it. A scoring key separated the contacts into two groups, the “rights” and the “wrongs.” When an answer sheet was inserted, an amount of current equal to the total rights and total wrongs was allowed to flow. When the operator manipulated the controls, the 805 indicated the scores.

The IBM 805’s speed was limited only by the operator’s ability to insert sheets in the machine and record the scores. An experienced operator could record scores on answer sheets at the rate of about 800 sheets per hour or call the scores to a recording clerk at the rate of 1000 sheets an hour.

Johnson’s Hard Disk Drive

Johnson went on to a prolific career in Endicott, where he had fifty-three patents, mostly in the area he called input, before leaving for San Jose, California, in 1951, when he got an offer, that was to change his life and work and to have a major impact on IBM and the computing world. He was asked to move to California to head a new laboratory where IBM would have a better chance to hire the engineers needed to move into the technical areas just being established and to provide closer contact with IBM’s most innovative customers. Johnson was given a charter to define his own programs so long as they did not duplicate the programs of others and he was expected to devote some of his efforts to adapting IBM machines to special customer needs.

With Johnson’s background in data input, then mainly punched cards, programs were soon directed at means of automating the input function. The massive input data source he addressed was the punched-card tub file from which, for each transaction, cards were pulled identifying customer, inventory, pricing, and so forth for subsequent punch card processing. The tub file was that eras’ data source with random access to the data. Many configurations were addressed for machine access to stored data. They included magnetic data storage on rigid rotating disks, on drums, on tape strips, and on wires. Early in the life of the new lab, Johnson became convinced that disks offered significant advantages over the other alternatives and, despite obvious unsolved problems, directed the laboratory in that direction. His belief in the inventive capabilities of his staff was rewarded when in a relatively short time, from present perspectives, air bearings were providing close spacings to rotating (and wobbling) disks, the electronics of read-write heads were taking shape, and the disk and its magnetic coating were in the early definition. The new disk file was then defined as a five million-character machine, and the IBM 350 Random Access Method of Accounting and Control was established.

The product was transferred from Rey’s lab to a new development lab and subsequently was shipped in September 1956 under the name IBM 350 Disk Storage, integrated in IBM’s new model computer—IBM 305 RAMAC (Random Access Memory Accounting) system. Nothing interesting as a design, it was one of the last vacuum tube systems designed in IBM, but… it introduced disk storage technology to the world, so it became a market hit and more than 1000 305s were built before production ended in 1961.

The 350 Disk Storage Unit consisted of the magnetic disk memory unit with its access mechanism, the electronic and pneumatic controls for the access mechanism, and a small air compressor. Assembled with covers, it was 150 cm long, 170 cm high and 72 cm deep. It was configured with 50 24-inch magnetic disks containing 50000 sectors, each of which held 100 alphanumeric characters, for a total capacity of 5 million characters. Disks rotated at 1200 rpm, and tracks (20 to the inch) were recorded at up to 100 bits per inch. The execution of a “seek” instruction positioned a read-write head to the track that contained the desired sector and selected the sector for a later read or write operation. Seek time averaged about 600 milliseconds. The disk system cost some $10000.

Biography of Reynold B. Johnson

Reynold (Rey) Benjamin Johnson was born in his family’s farm near Kingston, north of Dassel, a small town in Meeker County, Minnesota, on 7 July 1906, the ninth of ten children, with seven sisters and two brothers. His parents were Swedish immigrants: John Alfred Johnson (15 Nov 1863–4 Aug 1951), and Elizabeth Erickson-Johnson (15 Oct 1868–10 Aug 1930), who married in 1888 and had ten children: Eleanor Electa (1888–1981), Millicent (1890–1980), Hildur Mabel Sophie (1892–1991), Effie (1894–1990), Phoebe (1896–1965), Signe Wilhelmina (1899–2008), Myrtle Marie (1901–1985), Leroy Theodore (1904–1999), Reynold Benjamin (1906–1998), and Donovan Albert (1910–2007).

Rey was raised on his family’s farm, where from the beginning he showed a keen mechanical talent. At an early age, he built a submersible submarine, which he exhibited in the horse trough. After completing his early schooling in Dassel, Rey attended and graduated from the Minnehaha Academy High School in Minneapolis in 1925. His older sisters are said to have taken a keen interest in his education. Then he went on to graduate from the University of Minnesota (BS in Educational Administration, 1929).

After graduation, Johnson worked for Ironwood High School on the Michigan Peninsula, where he taught mathematics and science. He lost his job during the Great Depression in 1933, but was hired by IBM in 1934, worked there until 1971, and when he retired he had at least 90 patents to his name, but he had not finished inventing. At his own Education Engineering Associates consulting company in Palo Alto, he developed a microphonograph that allows children to point a hand-held device at a picture or word in a book and hear it tell them what it was. He was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan.

Johnson was also responsible for the half-inch videocassette tapes used by Sony for a long time. While on loan to Sony for another project, he came up with a prototype of a VCR tape less than half the width of the tape Sony was then putting on reels.

Rey Johnson married his teaching colleague Beatrice Pearl Rashleigh (2 Mar 1908–13 Feb 2004), and they had a daughter (Karen) and two sons, Philip and David.

Rey Johnson died on 15 September 1998, at the age of 92, of metastatic melanoma in Palo Alto, California.

Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev (Пафнутий Львович Чебышёв) (1821-1894) was a prominent Russian mathematician, who is considered to be a founding father of Russian mathematics. Besides mathematics, Chebyshev spent much of his time working on questions of mechanical engineering, and in the early 1870s, he designed and manufactured very interesting calculating machines.

In 1876 Chebyshev made a report to the French Association of Assistance to Prosperity of Sciences about his first calculating machine. The report was called “An Adding Machine of Continuous Motion”. In the same 1876, the device was probably exhibited at the scientific meeting in Clermont-Ferrand.

It was a ten decimal places adding machine with a continuous tens carry, the first known machine with this type of carry mechanism. In a regular calculation with discrete carry, the wheel of higher rank moves on by one point, while the lower rank wheel moves from 9 to 0. During the continuous tens carry, the wheel of higher rank moves from one point to the next gradually and continuously, while the lower rank wheel turns by one revolution. Hence, it is necessary to have a construction such that the wheel of the tens moves ten times slower than that of the units, the wheel of the hundreds moves ten times slower than that of the tens, etc. This can be achieved with gears in a 1 to 10 ratio between the units and the tens, between the tens and the hundreds, and so on. This solution then totally dispenses with the usually complex mechanisms required for an intermittent motion. It also makes it possible to do calculations much faster.

Chebyshev reached this effect of gradual movement by implementing a planetary transmission (the same principle will be used some ten years later on by Eduard Selling).

Two years later Chebyshev created a second improved model of his adding device, which was presented in 1878 to Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in Paris. Later, he made a dividing-multiplying extension unit for the machine, which was also sent to the Paris museum in 1881. So the machine became a real arithmometre (it can be used for all arithmetical operations), which has two separate blocks—one for addition and subtraction, and one for multiplication and division.

In 1882, Chebyshev returned to France and had a second machine built in Paris by the firm Gautier. Another copy of the machine was built after Chebyshev’s death for exhibition in Moscow.

The main purpose of the machine was to demonstrate the new principle of continuous tens carry. The dividing-multiplying unit also had some innovations, e.g. the automatic shifting of the carriage from decimal place to decimal place. The unit itself served as the carriage part, that is the moving part of the mechanism. It was mounted on the adding machine, thus imposing one single device. To perform multiplication, the operator only needed to turn the handle. The number of turns was equal to the sum of numbers of the multiplication factor, added to the number of its decimal places minus one. After multiplying by a number (digit) of one decimal place, the mechanism automatically stopped multiplication and shifted the carriage to the next decimal place. This was repeated with the next decimal place digit, etc. The number of handle turns was automatically controlled by means of a special counter, connected to the mechanism for setting the factor.

Since the donation of the machine to the museum was not followed by any publications in western media, this invention didn’t become famous (but the arithmometre was described in some Russian sources, for example, this one from 1894, and this article by von Bool.). As late as 1890 the French mathematician François Édouard Anatole Lucas (one of the creators of the famous Genaille-Lucas rulers) displayed a variety of Chebyshev’s mechanisms, including the arithmometre, on a special stand at the Paris Museum and gave several lectures about Chebyshev. Later on, the French historian Maurice d’Ocagne (1862-1938) contacted Chebyshev for a description of the machine and published an article.

In fact, both machines of Chebyshev were made only for demonstration purposes. He never seriously thought of creating a device for practical or commercial use. His personal innovations are continuous tens carry and automatic shifting of the carriage from decimal place to decimal place during multiplication (Chebyshev proved that these principles can help build extremely efficient machines). Both inventions became popular and were widely implemented in 1930s when electromotive drives came into use in the quickly growing generation of automatic and semi-automatic keyboard calculating machines.

The adding machine of Chebyshev is an unusual calculating machine. Using gradual motion, it dispenses with carry levers and such, and allows for faster calculations. It is also a modular machine, in which an independent addition component becomes a sliding carriage of a larger multiplication machine. Chebyshev also automated the multiplication by one digit and the shift of the carriage, so that the user merely has to rotate the crank and not worry about shifting when multiplying by numbers greater than 9.

Biography of Pafnuty Chebyshev

Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev was born in his father’s estate in the village of Okatovo, district of Borovsk, province of Kaluga, on 16 May 1821, into an upper-class family with an impressive history. He was the first son of Lev Pavlovich Chebyshev (1789-1861), a military officer and landowner, who in 1815 left the army as a cornet in the cavalry, and in 1817 married Agrafena Ivanovna Pozniakova (1790-1867) from Kaluga. The family had (from the beginning of the 18th century) a big estate in Spas-Prognanie village, Kaluga area. Lev and Agrafena had five sons and four daughters: Elisaveta (1819-1888), Pafnuty (1821-1894), Pavel (1822-1869), Piotr (1824-1891), Ekaterina (1827-1910), Nadezhda (1819-1910), Nikolai (1830-1875), Vladimir (1831-1905), and Olga (1836-1908).

Pafnuty Lvovich’s early education was at home where both his mother and his cousin Avdotia Kvintillianova Soukhareva were his teachers. From his mother, he learned the basic skills of reading and writing, while his cousin acted as a governess to the young boy and taught him French and arithmetic. Chebyshev mentioned that his music teacher also played an important role in his education, for she “raised his mind to exactness and analysis.” One of the children’s hobbies of Pafnuty was the study of the mechanisms of toys and machines, and he himself invented and made them. All was not easy for the young boy, however, for with one leg longer than the other he had a limp which prevented him from taking part in many of the normal childhood activities, so his parents abandoned the idea of his becoming an officer in the family tradition.

In 1832 the family moved to Moscow, mainly to attend to the education of their eldest sons (Pafnuty and Pavel, who would become lawyers). His parents engaged teachers of excellent reputation, including Platon Pogorelski, who was considered the best elementary mathematics tutor in Moscow, and Pafnuty studied mathematics, physics, and Latin. In 1837 he entered Moscow University, where he studied mathematics under professor Nikolaus Braschmann, and obtained a bachelor’s degree in 1841, and a master’s degree in 1846. In 1847 Pafnuty was appointed as a professor at St Petersburg University and kept this position until 1882.

Chebyshev was a remarkable inventor, who devised multiple machines, presented and prized at many expositions all over the world, e.g. London Exposition of 1876, Philadelphia Exposition of 1876, Paris Exposition of 1876, and Chicago Exposition of 1893. His inventions inlcude: a steam machine, bicycle, sorting machine, rowing machine, scooter, press, and many other devices.

As to Chebyshev’s personal life, he never married and lived alone in a large house with ten rooms. He was rich, spending little on everyday comforts but he had one great love, namely that of buying property and paying for models of his machines. It was on this that he spent most of his money but he did financially support a daughter whom he refused to officially acknowledge. He did spend time with this daughter, especially after she married a colonel.

Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev died in his home in St Petersburg on 26 November 1894, of complications after influenza, and was buried at his family estate in Spas-Prognanie village.

In 1878 Ramón Silvestre Verea Aguiar y García (1833-1899), a Spaniard, and newspaper publisher in New York, patented a direct-multiplying calculating machine, which seems to be the second patented machine of this type in the world  (after the machine of Edmund Barbour), ten years before the first popular direct-multiplying machine of León Bollée.

Most early calculating machines carried out multiplication as a form of repeated addition. To multiply, say, by sixteen, one set the carriage at its rightmost position, turned the operating crank six times, shifted the carriage one position to the left, and turned the crank once. In direct-multiplying calculating machines, the operator had only to perform n operations when the multiplier was an n digit number.

Ramón Verea was a Spaniard, who in 1865 settled in New York, working as a journalist in a magazine, an agent for inventions and trading with Spanish gold and banknotes, which got him interested in calculation. The inventor himself listed in an article in the New York newspaper Las Novedades, issue 1 April 1881, his motives to create the calculating machine:
My object in undertaking an invention at first sight impossible it was not the hope of refunding even a part of several thousand dollars that I have spent; neither it was to become a celebrity like others, my ambition was driven by:
1) A little egoism;
2) Much patriotism, the desire to prove that in inventive genius a Spaniard can leave behind the eminences of the most cultured nations;
3) The innate eagerness to contribute something to the advancement of science; and lastly
4) Entertainment according to my tastes and inclinations.

On 5 July 1878, Verea applied, and on 10 September 1878, he received a U.S. patent №207918 for his machine. It seems, that he manufactured also two prototypes, one of them sent together with the patent application to the US Patent Office, and the second, which the same year (1878) was exposed and won a gold medal of the Exposición Mundial de Inventos de Cuba in Matanzas, Cuba.

The advanced calculating machine of Verea didn’t remain unnoticed. Soon many newspapers like New York Herald, Scientific American, Le Courrier, Las Novedades, published articles about the machine. In the Scientific American, Vol. 39, Nr. 16 of October 1878, the message was short: Mr. Ramon Verea, of New York City, has patented an improved Calculating Machine. This ingenious machine is capable of rapidly performing addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The details of its construction cannot be properly described without engravings.

In the New York Herald article (later reprinted in other newspapers, like Morning Journal and Courier, New Haven, Conn., 13 April 1881) the machine of Verea was described in more detail (see below):

Multiplication by Machinery.A Lot of Cogs and Wheels that Perform Arithmetical Calculations with Wondrous Rapidity and Accuracy.Nothing seems more paradoxical than to perform the arithmetical operations, which appear to belong exclusively to the mind, by a combination of metallic pieces. Pope Sylvester II, to whom the world is indebted for the system of Arabic figures, tried to make a calculating machine. Pascal and Leibnits spent years in vain attempts to solve the problem of mechanical mathematical calculation, and others worked at the same task until Thomas de Colmar, the French mathematician, discovered a method in 1822. Elaborations of the principles contained in his machine have been numerous but all results have only succeeded in perfecting a way to add and subtract. This made multiplication possible by adding one factor to itself as many times as there were units in the other factor, but the process was long and tedious.
Mr. Ramon Verea, a Spanish resident of New York, has been devoting his leisure hours for several years in developing a machine that will multiply and divide, and has finally succeeded. It will produce a product having fifteen figures and the factors may be of nine or less than nine and six or less than six figures. A turn of a small crank once for each figure in the multiplier displays the product on a disc. The work is almost instantaneous and the accuracy of it unimpeachable. The machine consists of ten circular plates placed vertically, and on the edge of each are figures from 1 to 9 inclusive and zero. On the sides of these plates are points which form in substance a multiplication table. Suppose 9 is to be multiplied by 6. The first plate is turned so that nine shows on top; the other factor is then shown on a wheel belonging to a similar set as those on, which nine is shown. When the crank is turned the multiplicand plate turns six-ninths of a revolution and a point on the fourth concentric circle of points on the side of the plate is presented on one side and a point on the fifth concentric circle on the other. These two points meet each a small tongue which operates upon the product box, where the result is directly shown. The mechanism by which the product is recorded is too complicated to admit of a description except at great length. There are a series of wheels worked upon, each of them graduated as to size and shape with the concentric circles on the plates. It might be said that in the multiplication the additions necessary are made simultaneously with the multiplication. For example, multiplying 56 by 7 the process is 7 times 6 are 42, 7 times 5 are 35 and 4 are 39-product, 392. With the machine the work is instantaneous. When the wheel is turned the record is first made of 42 and then of 35, that is the 5 is at once added to the figure in the place of the tens of the other number, and the entire product “bobs up serenely” as the crank completes the revolution. If the multiplier were a double number, say 56 by 27, another turn of the crank would make the multiplication and addition complete. To prove the operation, pressing a button throws into gear a new set of wheels, and a turn of the crank reduces all the numbers in the product box to zero. Should zero not at once appear it would prove the original operation was wrong.

Mr. Verea explains that he did not make the machine either to sell its patent or to put it into use, but simply to show that it was possible and that a Spaniard can invent as well as an American. A number of the tests that were made in the presence of a Herald reporter and other visitors were conducted with facility and accuracy. The operation of multiplying 9,000,000 by 9,000 was correctly performed by the machine while the reporter and an accountant were trying to write out the product which they had already arrived at by a mental process.

*** End of article ***

Sadly, soon the sands closed over the machine of Verea. He never tried to market it. He just walked away and never invented anything else. As he said: “I just moved the desire to contribute something to the advancement of science and a little self-esteem. I am a journalist and not a scientist and also what I wanted to show… is already proven.”

It seems Verea produced totally three examples of his calculating machine. The prototype of Verea’s machine, which was sent by the inventor to the US Patent Office (see the nearby image), together with the application in July 1878, was kept in the tanks of the headquarters of IBM in White Plains (New York) to be part of the collection begun in 1930 by the founder of IBM—Thomas Watson.

Verea’s calculator was made of iron, brass, and steel, about 25 kilograms, 35 cm long, 23 cm wide, and 20 cm high. It was able to add, multiply and divide numbers of nine figures, allowing up to six numbers in the multiplier and fifteen in the product. The multiplication was solved through the direct method, based on a mechanism patented by Edmund D. Barbour in 1872. Verea saw how to do the whole multiplication in one stroke of a lever.

The basis of his machine was a ten-sided metal prism or cylinder (at the front side of the device you can see the two ten-sided brass cylinders, that are mounted vertically). Each of the sides of each cylinder has two columns of holes, with ten holes in a column. The holes come in ten sizes, with the largest and deepest representing zero, and the smallest and shallowest—nine. The holes represent multiples of a given digit.

Above the cylinders are two knobs that move in slots in the flat top of the machine. Pulling forward a knob rotates the cylinder below, so that the side facing the back of the machine has holes representing multiples of the digit desired. Behind this mechanism is a row of tapered pins. Pulling a lever at the back of the machine raises or lowers these pins in order to set the multiplier. Turning a crank on the right side moves the pins up to the faces of the cylinders and, where there are holes in the cylinder, allows the pins to enter to a certain depth.

Once the surface of a cylinder touched a pin, it pushed the pin, and a rack behind the pin, backward. Pins entering shallow holes reach the cylinder quickly and have a correspondingly greater effect on the rack. Pinions linked to the racks rotate correspondingly, rotating the result wheels at the back of the machine, with carrying occurring as required. Further turning of the crank restores the cylinder, racks, and pins to their original position.

It seems the prototypes of the machine, although looking primitive, worked perfectly for demonstration purposes. During one of the demonstrations (different from the previously mentioned demo in the presence of a New York Herald reporter), the device could multiply 698543721 x 807689 in twenty seconds, an amazing speed for the time.

Biography of Ramon Verea

The Galician Ramón Silvestre Verea Aguiar y García was born on 11 December 1833, in the farm of his family in the small rural community of Esmorís, parish San Miguel de Curantes, Pontevedra, to Juan Verea Filloy (a son of Pedro Verea and María Filloy from Esmorís) and Florentina García de Porto (a daughter of Jose Garcia and Feliciana de Porto, from Freán, parish of Santa Cristina de Vinseiro, Pontevedra). The humble house, where Ramón was born, is still preserved (slightly renewed) in Esmoris (see the nearby image).

As a boy, Ramón attended the primary school in Curantes, and was tutored by his uncle, the priest Francisco de Porto, an educated man, and owner of a big library. In 1847, at age of fourteen, Ramón left his home to enter the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Santiago de Compostela, planning to pursue “the literary career”. However, in 1849, following the wish of his uncle for a priestly career, he entered the Seminario Conciliar in Santiago de Compostela (see the lower image).

Verea stayed in the seminary for five years (until 1854) and appears immediately as a great student, achieving remarkable results in philosophy, metaphysics, Hebrew, etc. During his summer holidays, he devoted himself to his passion for reading, and organized an impromptu workshop on the porch of his house, in order to master different gadgets. However, Verea’s curious mind always tried to investigate the reason behind everything, thus his numerous questions could not get the appropriate answers from his religious teachers. At some moment his faith hesitated, and he realized that he is not going to devote his life to religion.

In 1855 Verea shipped to Cuba, to begin his real-life adventure. There he started as a schoolmaster and teacher in Sagua la Grande, a small city near Colón, and then in Colón, where he wrote two novels and writes as a journalist for newspapers like El Progreso. He also studied English, planning his relocation to the USA.

There was a description of Verea from 1862 from his friend, the journalist and writer José Manuel Pérez Moris: “…a young 28 years old, tall, tanned, slim waist and wide chest, facing clear, large eyes, alive and intelligent, happy character, determined, restless and frank… “.

Already in his student years, Verea was interested in making simple devices that could have useful applications. In 1863, during his stay in Colón, Cuba, he devised a machine for folding newspapers. Later, when he already lived in the US, as he hadn’t sufficient financial resources to build and patent the apparatus, he sold his invention to a speculator in New York.

In 1865, looking for better luck, Verea moved for a short time to Puerto Rico, then to New York, USA. There he started as a journalist in a biweekly Spanish-language newspaper, and a teacher and translator in Spanish. At the same time, Verea kept his interest in inventions and in machinery, and in 1867 he returned to the city of Havana, where he tried to establish himself as a representative to introduce machinery and appliances of the modern invention in Cuba. The project, despite not reaching the benefits Verea expected, helped him to save some money and to obtain a good experience.

After spending almost eight years in Havana, Verea returned to New York with a small capital and in 1875 established an Industrial Agency for the Purchase of Machinery and Effects of Modern Invention. It seems he remained keen on journalism all the time and in 1877 he became a director of the newspaper El Cronista.

Hearing the complaints of his Spanish friends and insinuations of his American friends, that the Spanish have fallen behind in the historical process of scientific and technical progress, that the Spanish had no capacity to adapt, and that his time had passed, he decided to prove the opposite, creating a very interesting direct-multiplying calculating machine.

in 1879 Verea returned for some time to his home country. In his village in Curantes he found everything remains the same, no progress since his childhood and his parents are already dead. He visited Santiago and Coruña and returned to the USA in 1881.

Back in the city of New York, in 1882 he sets up a modern printing press named “The polyglottis”. In January 1884, he founded a monthly illustrated magazine, El Progreso, which was printed on his press.

In February 1895, displeased at his life in New York and the US policy of intervention in Cuba and the Philippines, Verea moved to Guatemala. There he was warmly welcomed by President Reina Barros, and wrote several books, “La defensa de España”, “La cuestión de Cuba”, etc. However, Verea was soon disappointed by the policy of the president and was again searching for a better place.

In 1897, Ramon Verea, single and lonely, moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the hope to meet several Galician intellectuals and some relatives who lived there. In that city, he founded the biweekly journal El Progreso (Jan. 1898), and continued to publish and act as a journalist.

Ramón Verea spent all his life as an idealist and liberal. He preached for equality between men and women, the abolition of slavery, and freedom of expression. He wanted to defend reason against fanaticism; to defend the Chinese, the blacks, the Indians and all the oppressed who could give me nothing, against the oppressors who are strong and powerful and from whom gold and favour can be obtained.

This beautiful mind—Ramón Silvestre Verea Aguiar y García, died leaving no issue, poor and lonely, from an infection of the lungs in the capital of Argentina on 6 February 1899, and was buried in an anonymous grave in Cementerio del Oeste, Buenos Aires.

The American engineer and entrepreneur George Barnard Grant (1849-1917) is a notable figure in the world of the mechanical calculator. He was the creator of several all-purpose calculators, but also of a magnificent Difference Engine. As a whole, Grant devised four different calculating machines: three all-purpose calculators, and a sophisticated machine for computing tables.

While in Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University, in 1869, George Grant got interested in calculating machines while he was computing a table for excavations and embankments, but he soon became discouraged with his initial efforts when he realized the subject was more difficult than he had anticipated. Thus between 1870 and 1872, he devised firstly a simple calculator and later continued with several more complex calculating machines. All his devices were well-designed and workable machines, and although none of them achieved market success, they fully deserve our attention.

The first calculating machine of George Grant

Grant filed his first two patent applications in 1872, and soon get patents for a simple calculating machine (US Patent №129335 from 16 July 1872, and №138245 from 29 April 1873). Let’s examine the machine, described in the second patent, which presents an improved version of the first one.

The numbers are entered through the openings of the lid (marked with P in the patent drawing), mounted on the sliders g and g’. The results are shown on the digital wheels (which are similar to teeth-strips), placed under the lid. Adding of the number is performed by means of the movable carriage C, which can be rotated by means of the handle H. On the lid are cut off slots (or openings in the first patent), in which are being pushed in the pin p. The slots (openings) are graduated with the digits from 1 to 9 and the number is entered by pushing in the pins in the appropriate openings, while the lowest row is for units, upper row is for tens, etc. In this way the entered number can be multiplied by 10 or divided to 10 (by moving upwards or downwards of the lid to one division). Besides the graduated digits are inscribed smaller digits (from 9 to 1), which are complementing to 9 of the bigger digits and are used during the subtraction and division. The digital wheels A, B, C, D and so on, are placed below the slots, and each wheel is divided by two (or three) groups of 10 teeth, each tooth is marked with a digit.

The machine has also a mechanism for zeroing the display of digital wheels.

The pins are acting as a stop for placed below digital wheels, which during the rotation of the handle (carrier) make a motion forward-backward and transfer the numbers from the input to the displaying mechanism.

In his patent from 1873, George Grant suggested three variants of the tens carry mechanism, depending on the capacity of the machine.

It seems the first machine of Grant remained only on paper and even the patent model (up to 1880, the Patent Office required inventors to submit a model with their patent application) didn’t survive to our time, but obviously, the inventor used it as a base during the creation of the much more successful…

The second calculating machine of George Grant

In 1876 Grant exhibited at the 1876 USA Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, two calculating machines—a magnificent differential machine, and a smaller calculating device (also known as the Centennial Adding Machine), which has many improvements compared to his first calculating machine (patented in 1872) and was described in the third patent from 1887 (interestingly, the patent application for this machine was filed in 1878, but the patent was granted as late as 1887 (US Patent №368528), so obviously Grant had problems with this patent).

The official report of the United States Centennial Commission mentioned:
The most important exhibits of this class [Mechanical Calculation] were the two calculating machines of Mr. George B. Grant, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the larger one of which is arranged to combine and print functions involving 100 elements. The combination of the several parts is extremely simple; the number of elements can be indefinitely increased, and the machine acts with the greatest certainty. The smaller machine, or arithmometer, is an adding-machine, which successfully rivals the well-known one of Colmar. The adding-machine of Petersson, of Norway, also deserves special mention here.

The above-mentioned arithmometer was a device, made from some 400 parts, 30 cm long and 15 cm high. Several copies were built and are to be found in the Smithsonian and private collections, but the machine was never placed in commercial production. Grant was able to get this device to operate rapidly (…a poorly made apparatus has been worked at the rate of 10,000 operations per minute with perfect accuracy) and may well have used this as part of his experiments to produce other calculating machines.

This machine was reported to be intended for use in counting houses, insurance offices, etc., and was described as a smaller instrument for common operations in multiplication, division, etc. It is a foot in length by half as much in height and width, weighs twenty pounds, and contains less than 400 pieces, less than 75 of which are working parts. It takes numbers up to nine decimal places.

In 1881, Grant exhibited this machine in his home state at Fourteenth Exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, Boston, 1881, and won a gold medal. The report of the exhibition stated: This calculating machine has now stood the test of practical use, several of the machines having been employed during the past three years. It is admirably adapted for an extensive range of computations in multiplication and division, and surpasses all other instruments now used for such computations in respect to simplicity, strength, compactness, durability, cheapness, rapidity and accuracy of operation.

There are several different examples of the Centennial Model in the collection of the National Museum of American History (see one of them in the photo below).

One of the models in the museum (overall measurement: 19.5 cm x 34.3 cm x 14.4 cm) has a rectangular wooden base, cut out to allow for the motion of a set of wheels that rotates on a shaft near the bottom. This shaft is linked to a larger upper cylinder by gears so that the wheels and the cylinder turn simultaneously when a handle at the right end of the upper cylinder is rotated. The frame for the instrument consists of hollow discs at opposite ends of the base, which are connected to the two shafts already mentioned, and a third shaft that carries a set of 20 spring claws that link to the gears of the wheels.

The frame is made up of two plates at either end of the base connected by metal shafts. The mechanism has a large upper cylinder and a small lower cylinder linked by gears of equal size. Part of the upper cylinder has a metal collar that can be set at any of 18 positions on the cylinder with a locking pin. This collar supports 18 movable rings. Each ring has an adding pin and a stud on it which may be set at any of ten positions, labeled by the digits from 0 to 9. The lower cylinder has 20 (or 10 in some examples) recording wheels on it, each provided with 30 teeth. The digits from 0 to 9 are stamped three times around each wheel. The spring claws fit the gears of the recording wheels. If a claw is pushed down, it engages the gear of the recording wheel, causing it to rotate. Studs on the wheel lead to carrying by engaging the next claw over.

Paper loops numbered from 0 to 9 three times run around each wheel. On a bar between the cylinders is a row of ten spring claws, one for each recording wheel. If a claw is pushed down, it engages the gear of the recording wheel, causing it to rotate. Studs on the wheel lead to carrying by engaging the next claw over.

This model has no mechanism for displaying the multiplier or multiplicand. A flat disk at the end of a lever on the left side serves as a brake on the operating wheels, indicating when the operating crank has been turned through one revolution.

The judges at the Centennial Exhibition gave Grant an award for his invention, and described his machine as “superior to all other instruments of its class yet produced.” It was lauded by actuaries and distinguished professors but never gained large sales. This version of the machine was sold for $100.

In 1898, Encyclopaedia Britannica reported that there were numerous crank-operated calculating machines for multiplication and division, including machines made by Thomas, Tate, Odhner, Baldwin, and Grant. “Grant’s machine consisted of a cylinder bearing a set of rings on which were the numerals. These he terms adding-rings. A similar set of rings is placed on a shaft below, and these he terms registering wheels. In order to multiply, the adding-rings are set to read the multiplicand, and the registering-wheels the multiplier. If the multiplicand was 387432, the crank would be turned three times and a slide shifted, then eight times and a slide shifted, and so on. At the conclusion of the turning the answer could be read on the recording-wheels.”

The third calculating machine of George Grant

At the beginning of the 1890s Grant designed a new calculating machine (patented in 1898, US Patent №605288), added a printing device, and began serial production of his calculator (advertised as “ciphering hand-organ”) with some success (about 125 machines were sold) until the end of the 19^th century. This calculating machine (called Grant’s Grasshopper Model because of its appearance) was exhibited at the Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893 and was described in the journal Manufacturer and Builder, vol. 26, issue 9 (Sep. 1894) (see the figure below). Later on, Grant designed an experimental model, designed to incorporate subtraction and division as well as addition and multiplication.

The machine (overall measurements: 20.7 cm x 24 cm x 27.5 cm; weight: 4.5 kg) has an open iron frame painted black, with steel and brass parts and paper labels. Five sliding pins at the front of the machine are used to set numbers on racks beneath. Next to each pin is a thin strip of paper with the digits from 0 to 9 printed on it. The digits increase as one goes toward the back of the machine. Each strip also has complementary digits in smaller type, for use in subtraction and division. Moving back a pin drives back a toothed rack.

Behind the racks is a movable carriage with 11 gears on it. A paper strip with digits on it is next to each gear. Turning a crank at the front right of the machine moves the racks back to engage the gears, turning each one of them in proportion to the number set. When the adding frame reaches the end of its backward movement, a cam set on the crankshaft at the front raises all the register gears a little so that the gears are disengaged from the racks and not moved in the return motion. One tooth on each gear extends so that when the gear has made a complete rotation, it engages one of the carry teeth arranged on a spiral shaft above the carriage. As the adding racks return to position, the shaft revolves and the carry tooth pushes the next gear up by one, resulting in a carry. The result appears o the paper strips between the gears on the carriage.

Fourth calculating machine (difference engine) of George Grant

Grant’s interest in construction mechanical calculators was aroused while at the Lawrence Scientific School he was computing a table for excavations and embankments, but he became discouraged with his initial efforts when he realized the subject was more difficult than he had anticipated. In 1870, however, he heard of the Babbage difference engine and proceeded to design one himself. Upon meeting with skepticism concerning the workability of his design, he again laid it aside.

Grant was aroused to resume work on the project when Professor Wolcott Gibbs inquired about his progress and encouraged him to pursue it further. Grant was in the right place: His major supporter, Wolcott Gibbs (1822-1908), since 1863 Rumford Professor of Chemistry at Harvard, was a member of that circle of scientists whose older leaders had supported Gould and his endeavors at Albany. Henry Lawrence Eustis (1819-1885), a Professor of engineering, who became Dean of the Lawrence School in 1871, approved and helped the project. Another supporter was Joseph Winlock, director of the Harvard College Observatory, who when was head of the Nautical Almanac had approved the work done on the Scheutz machine for that office. John M. Batchelder, who had operated the Scheutz machine at Albany as one of Gould’s Coast Survey assistants, was in Cambridge, ready to advise Grant.

Grant described the design represented in this model in the August 1871 issue of the magazine American Journal of Science. The publication, entitled “On a New Difference Engine” (see the article of Grant), included references to several accounts of the Babbage and Scheutz difference engines, such as Lardner’s detailed article from 1834 in Edinburgh Review, the 1854 British patent specifications of the Scheutz machine, and some of Babbage’s own writings dealing with both machines. The version of the machine described in this 1871 article had numerous features in common with the Scheutz machine. Thus, it too was designed to print by stamping the result on a sheet suitable for stereotyping. Grant did not describe the printing mechanism, beyond observing that it contains nothing new of importance. Again there was a set of number wheels, and as in Wiberg’s machine, their arrangement differed from that in the Scheutz machine by being purely linear. For a maximum capacity of n digits per number, there were n sets of these wheels, each using m wheels if the m^st difference was constant. All these wheels were arranged along a common axis. Again, odd orders of differences were added simultaneously in one operation, even ones in the next.

Following this publication, Grant continued to occupy himself with the problem of mechanical calculation. Aside from reading widely in the existing literature, particularly the patent literature. Upon his graduation, his scientific benefactors supported the further development of the difference engine. In 1874 the Boston Thursday Club raised a subscription for the construction of a large-scale model, which was supplemented by substantial support from Fairman Rogers of Philadelphia. Rogers not only supported the construction of the machine, but saw to it that Grant exhibited the machine at the 1876 Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia (see the lower figure), along with a small general-purpose calculator.

The official report of United States Centennial Commission mentioned:
The most important exhibits of this class [Mechanical Calculation] were the two calculating machines of Mr. George B. Grant, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the larger one of which is arranged to combine and print functions involving 100 elements. The combination of the several parts is extremely simple; the number of elements can be indefinitely increased, and the machine acts with the greatest certainty…

The difference machine of Grant was approximately 2.5 meters long and 1.5 meters high, and weight about 900 kg. It consists of up to 15000 pieces and is worth about 10000 $. It could be manually operated or connected to a power source. It was said to calculate 10 to 12 terms per minute when hand-cranked and to compute more than double that amount when power-driven; small sections of it had been tested at even higher speeds. The inventor emphasized the flexibility of the machine, which allowed any number of wheels of the k^th order of differences to be added to any wheel of the k-f 1^st order.

An important distinction between this difference machine and the model described in 1871 lay in the arrangement of the number wheels. It was again linear. But in the 1871 model, the wheels had been grouped by place figures, all the lowest decimal values being grouped together, then the next highest decimal value, etc. Within each such group appeared first the appropriate digit of the tabular value, then the corresponding one of the first order of differences, then that of the second order, and so on. Now the numbers were regrouped: all digits of the tabular value came first, then those of the first difference, then the second, etc. As a result, the carry mechanism, which was closely related to one covered by Grant’s general-purpose calculator patents, was simplified. The printing apparatus connected ten of the tabular function wheels with corresponding die-plates holding wax moulds for subsequent electrotyping.

Despite some publicity and favorable notices at the time of the exhibition (the insurance company Provident Mutual Life Insurance Co. even ordered a machine made to Grant’s design for purpose of calculating life insurance tables), the difference machine soon faded into relative obscurity. After Grant’s death in 1917, his difference engine, sent back to Philadelphia in the 1890s, had assumed the status of an antiquated curiosity.

Biography of George Grant

George Barnard Grant was born in Farmingdale (at that time part of Gardiner), Maine, on 21 December 1849, to Peter Grant (1806-1855), a farmer and shipbuilder, and his second wife Vesta Jane (Capen) Grant (1826-1915). Both his parents were descended from families that originally came from Britain to New England in the middle of the 17^th century (Grant family were descendants of James Grant (1605-1683) of Auchterblair, captured at the Battle of Worcester (1651) and deported to America together with his wife Agnes and son Peter).

Peter and Vesta Jane Grant married in 1844 and had three children: Izanna (1845–1924), William (1847–1847), and George Barnard (1849–1917), but Peter had four children from his first marriage to Margaret (Swan) Grant (1812–1843): Francis Swan (1836–1843), Peter (1838–1894), Catherine (1839–1850), and Margaret (1842–1865).

Peter Grant, the father of George Barnard, was the son of Peter Grant (1770–1836), and Nancy Barker Grant (1772–1853). Peter Grant Sr. was a native of Berwick, Maine, who moved to Gardiner in 1790. Finding financial success in land speculation and the merchant trade, Grant purchased 200 acres between Gardiner and Hallowell in 1800, and built a house there. His first house was destroyed by fire, and he had a new house built in 1830 as its replacement. Now the Peter Grant House (see the nearby photo) is a historic house at 10 Grant Street in Farmingdale. It is one Maine’s oldest surviving examples of Greek Revival architecture, with a temple front overlooking the Kennebec River. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

George Grant lost his father in May 1855 when he was only five years old, and in 1861 his mother Vesta remarried Edwin Allen Bailey, a farmer from Vermont. George Grant attended Bridgton Academy in Maine, then studied for three terms at the Chandler Scientific School of Dartmouth College, and entered in 1869 the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard, where he obtained his bachelor’s degree in engineering in 1873.

While in Lawrence Scientific School, in 1869, Grant got interested in calculating machines, and in Aug. 1871 he published a paper On a new difference engine in the American Journal of Science. Between 1872 and 1898, George Grant patented and manufactured in his company Grant Calculating Machine Company of Lexington, Massachusetts, several models of calculating machines. Grant continued to take an interest in this area and in his later years carried out experimental work on their development.

Grant became best known, however, not for his remarkable mechanical calculators, but for establishing a business that was a derivative of his experimentation with calculators. Just as Babbage’s needs had led to advances in precision tool and parts manufacture in England, and Donkin’s requirements for the second Scheutz machine caused him to develop new production techniques, so Grant discovered that, to obtain gears of the accuracy required for his calculators, he had to cut his own gears.

Soon after his graduation from Harvard in 1873, Grant established a gear-cutting machine shop in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and developed a successful machine for cutting gears using a device called a hob. When this business expanded, he moved the workshop to Boston, expanded it, and named it the Grant Gear Works Inc. From this extremely successful establishment evolved the Philadelphia Gear Works and the Cleveland Gear Works Inc. George Grant even wrote several very successful articles and books on the subject, for example A treatise on gear wheels; A handbook on the teeth of gears, their curves, properties and practical construction, etc. George Barnard Grant is considered one of the founders of gear-cutting industry in USA, and obtained several patents in this area.

After graduation from Harvard, Grant lived in Boston and Maplewood, Mass. He moved to Lexington, Massachusetts in 1887, and then to Pasadena, California, around 1900. In California Grant paid attention to his hobby—botany, especially the collection of preserved southern California plants (there are even several flowers called after him—Trifolium grantianum, Ribes grantii, Saltugilia splendens), creating a big private herbarium, which is now part of the Stanford University herbarium.

George Barnard Grant died on 16 August 1917, in Pasadena, California, having never married.

There are a few legends about how the young Swedish engineer Willgodt Odhner (1845-1905) became interested in calculating machines at the beginning of the 1870s. However, there are two stories about that told by Odhner himself. First of them is, that as a quite young engineer Odhner had in 1871 an opportunity to repair a Thomas calculating machine and then became convinced that it is possible to solve the problem of mechanical calculation in a simpler and more appropriate way. The other story is that in 1875 Odhner had read an article about Thomas arithmometer in Dinglers Polytechnisches Journal and thought it might be possible to construct a simpler calculating machine.

No matter when Odhner commenced his arithmometer, the prototype was finished at the end of 1875. The device was a pin-wheel-based calculator, housed in a rectangular wooden box and calculating with eight-digit precision. Odhner however didn’t consider this device as his first calculator (maybe it was too bad, or it relies too much on the ideas of Staffel or somebody else), because later on will write, that his first machine was manufactured in 1876, when was produced the second prototype (again pin-wheel, but with nine-digit precision).

In one interview, Frank Baldwin claimed that: “It was about this time that one of my 1875 models found its way to Europe, falling into the hands of a Mr. Odhner, a Swede. He took out patents in all European countries on a machine that did not vary in any important particular from mine, and several large manufacturing companies in Europe took it up. It is now appearing under ten to fifteen names in Europe, the more important being Brunsviga and Triumphator, manufactured in Germany.”

However, this assertion of Baldwin is quite questionable, despite the fact, that Odhner didn’t reveal his sources. Odhner seems to have been unaware of Baldwin’s calculator because it was patented in February 1875, when Odhner was already working on his calculator project. Most probable, Odhner used as sources machines of Roth or Staffel, which were well known in Europe since the 1840s. Actually, the pin-wheel of Odhner resembled very much the pin-wheel of David Wertheimber (the English agent of Roth), patented in 1843. Especially the machine of Staffel was well known in Russia because it was presented to the Russian Academy of Science in St. Petersburg and has been described in the Russian language. Later on, Werner Lange thoroughly analyzed the differences between the designs of Odhner and Baldwin and noted that the system of Odhner, where the result register is moving and the input wheels are fixed, is mechanically better. Staffel’s calculator is in this respect similar to the Baldwin calculator, but the input wheels are much smaller.

At the end of 1876, Odhner tried to convince his boss—the noted businessman Ludvig Nobel, to start the production of the calculator. Nobel made a deal with Odhner for producing 14 calculating machines. The capacity of these was 10 instead of 9 of the ”first” model. Nobel has given Willgott the use of a small portion of the factory to work with his machine and the production began at the beginning of 1877. Nobel and Odhner have made an agreement that Nobel shall carry all costs to see the business started and until then he is paying Odhner a salary on the condition that when the business has started they shall share for better or worse and take one-half of the profits each. These first Odhner’s factory-made calculators were finished in the latter half of 1877 (see the nearby image), and a total of 14 machines were built. However, later on, Nobel lost his interest and production ceased.

At the beginning of 1878, Odhner left one of his calculators to be refereed by the Imperial Russian Technical Society. He might have hoped to receive a state prize like the earlier Russian calculator inventors Slonimski and Staffel had got. The referee report for the calculator states:
…the same four basic arithmetic operations as with the Thomas arithmometer can be performed, even though the mechanism is different. Odhner arithmometer is much simpler with fewer different parts so the price of Odhner’s device will be much lower, the price being one of the reasons for the scarcity of calculating machines. Odhner’s device, with the same capacity as the Thomas arithmometer, also demands much less space. The arithmometer is only the first prototype and it can certainly be improved, even though it is praiseworthy in its present form. One must also note that some of the defects of the device are caused by the fact that until now the machine has been made manually without any special machines for producing different parts. A final statement on all the details of Odhner’s device can be given only after long-time use, but at least the following remarks can be made.
The durability of the revolution register clearing crank knob and the hook that moves the carriage is not sure.
Sometimes the dial wheels of either the result register or the revolution register (counter) stop halfway between two values and it is impossible to know which of the two digits partially showing in the window is correct. The same defect appears also in Thomas arithmometer, but there you can jerk the device slightly to obtain a correct outcome in the window. This does not work in Odhner’s machine, but the dial wheel trigger mechanism could be changed to correct this defect.
The turning of the crank is rather hard. To start the motion it may be necessary to use so much power that one must hold the device with the other hand to prevent it from moving on the table. The greatest power is needed when all the input values are set to nine. In the Thomas machine, the effort is also greatest when all the input values are nine, but even then it requires much less effort than the device of Odhner.
The size of the greatest possible multiplicand is 8 and the greatest possible multiplier 7, but the product can be calculated only with 10 numbers instead of the possible 15. This defect restricts remarkably the use of the device, but can no doubt be corrected. The tens carry operation is restricted so that only the 5 rightmost numbers of the product register are correct. By small modifications which do not increase the size of the device, this defect could be corrected.
In multiplication and division, the crank is often turned too many times. To correct it, the crank has to be turned once more but in the opposite direction. Then the value of the result register is corrected, but the value of the revolution register shows a defective value of two revolutions from the correct value. This defect which does not appear in the Thomas machine should be corrected so that the reverse turn corrects both the value of the result register and the revolution register. In some cases, clearing of the revolution register is quite difficult. If the values of all seven digits are equal, the small size of the clearing crank makes the clearing heavy. The defect could be corrected by introducing clearing by a spring analogous to one used in the Thomas arithmometer. The setting levers are so small that the design could be modified so that the fingers of the operator would not get tired so easily. This might be important during long calculations…

Odhner certainly studied this statement very carefully and tried to correct the defects in the improved version of his arithmometer.

In October 1878 Odhner received the US patent №209416,  although he had to change his initial patent application because some claims are found to be anticipated in the patent of Baldwin and in the patent of Alonzo Johnson (he was a holder of the US patent №85229 from 1868 for a simple adding device). This is another evidence, that Odhner didn’t know about Baldwin’s machine, because in this case, he wouldn’t include the disputed claims in his initial application. Nevertheless, the patent process was so fast and easy that Odhner and his business partner Königsberger decided to apply for a patent in other countries as well, thus they soon got a German patent (№7393 of 1878), a Swedish patent (№123 of 1879), and a Russian patent (№148 of 1879).

The dimensions of the first machines of Odhner are: 29 x 11,7 x 14,8 cm, and the weight is 6,3 kg.

Let’s examine the principle of action of the pin-wheel machine of Odhner, using the patent drawing (see nearby drawing).

The mechanism consists of two disks: basic (called counting wheel), which has nine grooves with fingers (marked with d) with projections. Over the basic disk is mounted a thin disk (called input disk) with groove L, in which are pushed in the projections of the fingers of the basic disk. The input disk can be rotated by means of a crank, and as the groove is in the form of two arcs with different radius, when the projection is pushed in the lower, then the finger is in the lower position, and when the projection is pushed in in the arc with bigger radius, then the appropriate finger is in upper condition and is sticked out of the periphery of the basic disk. Thus, if we want for example to enter 5, we have to rotate the input disk so, 5 fingers from the counter disk to be sticked out.

After all the digits are entered, then the main crank (the big crank in the right part of the machine), and all disks will be rotated according to the number of sticked out fingers of the appropriate counter disk, then the registration disk E, which is connected to a 10-teeth pinion will be engaged with the fingers and will be rotated to the proper angle. During this rotation the counter and the input disk are rotated together, so the entered number is kept. Newer models have levers for resetting of the input and registration mechanisms. The teeth I of the figure are part of the ten-carry mechanism. The cylindrical keys P, which can be seen in the front lower part of the body, are revolution-counters for the appropriate counter and input wheels. The mechanism with registration wheels is mounted as a separate block and can be moved leftwards and rightwards according to the mechanism with counter and input wheels by means of a slider. This is necessary during multiplication and division.

The adding operation is performed, as the addends are entered consecutively by means of the levers of the input wheels, as the entered number can be seen in the upper row of windows and by rotating the main crank these numbers are transferred downwards to the registering wheels, and the result can be seen in the lower row of windows.

The subtraction is done in a similar way, but after the minuend was transferred to the registration wheels and the subtrahend is entered in the input wheels, the crank must be rotated in the opposite for the adding direction.

The multiplication is done by consecutive adding. First, the bigger factor is entered by means of the input wheels, then the lever must be rotated so many times, according to the units of the other factor. Then the registration mechanism is moved rightwards by means of the slider, and the lever is rotated so many times, according to the tens of the other factor, and so on, until are used all digits of the other factor. The result can be seen in the lower windows.

The division is done by consecutive subtraction. Let’s examine the example, given in the patent of Odhner, 285582/8654=33. First, we enter the dividend and transfer it by rotating of the crank to the middle row of windows (registration mechanism). Then set up the divisor, and adjust slide H one place to the right, until the first digit (8) of the divisor is directly over the second digit (8) of the dividend, counting from the left. Then turn the crank C backward or to the right until the first digit (8) of the divisor can no longer be subtracted from the digits in the dividend which under and to the left of it. The number 3, which is the first digit of the quotient, will then appear on the second cylinder, P, and the dividend will be reduced to 25962, The slide H is next moved one place to the left, or back to its original position, and crank again rotated until the dividend disappears and a line of zeroes stands in its place. Figure 3 will then appear on the first cylinder, P, making the second figure of the quotient sought—to wit, 33. It will be seen, that the result indicates that the divisor, 8654 is contained three times in the first five figures, 28558, of the dividend, and three times in the new or second dividend, 25962.

Biography of Willgodt Odhner

Willgodt Theophil Odhner was born in Westby, parish of Dalby in northern Wärmland province of Sweden, on 10 August 1845, as the firstborn in the family of the forester and surveyor Theophil Dynamiel Odhner (1816-1863) and Fredrika Sofia Wall (1820-1874), the daughter of Gustaf Adolph Wall, a land-owner near Karlstad. Willgodt had three brothers: Hjalmar Mildhög (1846-1936), Sanfrid Victor Petrus (1851-1895), and Carl August Theophilus (1863-1918); and two sisters; Anna Fredrika (1847-), and Hildegard Petronella (1854-).

As a boy, Willgodt was just like his father Theophil Odhner, who ”was intended for the Ministry, and went through the college at Skara, but he was a practical, mathematical and inventive genius, and had no desire for the ministry.” Willgodt attended the school of Karlstad for two years in 1854-1856. After that, he moved to Stockholm to work at the lamp store of his uncle Aron Odhner. Soon he changed to a more challenging position as an employee of the instrument maker Georg Lyth.

At the beginning of 1863, Theophil Odhner suddenly died at the age of 46 leaving behind him a poverty-stricken widow and five young children, with a sixth to arrive three months later. The Odhner’s mother Fredrika was a very intellectual and poetical woman, who struggled bravely to bring up her children in the midst of much poverty.

On 3 Sep. 1864, Willgodt matriculated at the Kungliga tekniska högskolan (the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm) to study practical mechanics and mechanical technology. Odhner was promoted to the third year’s class in 1866, but never finished his studies and left the school during the spring of 1867.

The financial situation in Sweden was quite bad in 1868 and it was difficult to find a job. Thus Odhner decided to try his luck in St. Petersburg, Russia. He arrived in St. Petersburg in the fall of 1868 by steamboat at the age of 23 without knowing a word of the Russian language and having only 8 rubles with him. From the harbor, Odhner walked to the Swedish consulate where secretary Damberg, arranged for him a job at the small mechanical workshop of Macpherson at a salary of 1.1 rubles a day. After some months Odhner changed to work for his countryman Ludvig Nobel (Ludvig Nobel (1831-1888), one of the most prominent members of the Nobel family, was a remarkable engineer, a noted businessman, and a humanitarian) in his machine factory on the recently started rifle conversion project. The time that Odhner worked for Nobel was very important for his later career. Nobel did not appreciate diplomas and final examinations and thus it did not matter that Odhner had not completed his studies. He advanced soon to be a foreman and chief foreman.

In 1871 Willgodt married Alma Eleonora Martha Skånberg (1853-1927), born in Latvia, a daughter of Frederik Skånberg, a colleague of Ludvig Nobel. They will have eight children, but their life continued to be difficult from the very beginning because he writes: when the priest and musicians were paid at the wedding feast, my funds were so small that if my mother-in-law during the return trip had not given to me 10 rubles, we could not have eaten bread with our coffee on the following day. Even though Odhner was a technical genius, he clearly was not a very economical character and had difficulties in paying the expenses of his family and later also the salaries of his employees.

Odhner started to design his arithmometer probably in 1874 and the prototype was finished at the end of 1875. It was not very easy to design a calculator in one’s scant spare time. ”To work from 7 in the morning to 8 in the evening is not very nice for a newlywed poor man having a young and beautiful wife”. Twelve or fourteen hours a day was a common workday in Russia, but Nobel reduced it to 10.5 hours but maybe somewhat later. Odhner’s first child Alexander was born in 1873. His mother had come to St. Petersburg to see the birth of her first grandchild and died there in 1874. The progress of Odhner’s efforts was reported in an article that appeared in the newspaper St. Petersburger Zeitung on 10 Sep. 1875.

After the agreement with his boss—Nobel, for starting the production of the machine in the factory, Odhner again met many difficulties, personal and official. The relations of Odhner with the directors of the factory were quite bad. Odhner had to make debt to finance his living. At this time he had two children to take care of, Alexander, and Alma born in 1877. Earlier in 1877, Emilia—the second child of Odhner died at the age of two years. The political and economical situation in Russia was not good, because in the same 1877 was opened war between Turkey and Russia, so Nobel started to lose interest in the project for calculators. Thus Odhner started to ask for e new investor and he found it—as he writes I believe particularly energetic local businessman a certain Königsberger, on the condition that he takes the patents and pays all expenses and afterwards divides with me the future profits. However, it was not possible for me to get anything in cash. This would have been so welcome because I am now unemployed.

And again a lot of problems—Karl Königsberger was a serious businessman, but his purpose as a merchant was thus not to produce anything, but to sell the invention as such. The first selling efforts after patenting the invention were directed to the United States, where he had a business partner, but these were not successful. A representative of Königsberger succeeded in selling the license to German company Grimme, Natalis & Co to produce Odhner calculators for Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland, but that did not happen until 1892.

Even though Nobel did not want to continue the production of calculating machines, he promised Odhner a special project at his factory but when he traveled away from St. Petersburg, his ”masters” hired another Swede to do that. Odhner believed though that with patience he would get a better job and hoped every day to obtain one. In May 1878 Odhner began his work at ‘Экспедиции заготовления государственных бумаг’, a factory for producing state papers and he will stay there for the following 14 years. In 1881, after 3 years of work, Odhner received a great gold medal for his innovations. In addition, Odhner was also highly esteemed in the hierarchy of the Expedition. Although he was officially registered as a master technician, he received the higher salary of an engineer.

In 1886, the Expedition hired engineer Ivan Ivanovich Orlov, who developed a new printing press capable of producing multicolored images using only one printing plate. This new printing method was immediately implemented by the Expedition and Odhner was chosen as the producer of these and all later Orlovian presses for the Expedition.

In 1882 Odhner started his own business to produce a paper cut in special forms, together with his brother Sanfrid and an Englishman, working in the Expedition. Odhner designed and constructed different paper-cutting devices for the job. It is not known what happened to the paper business after 1882, but evidently, no great fortune was made with it. In the same 1882, Odhner constructed a turnstile for counting and controlling ticket sales, which was later widely used for passenger steamships operating on the canals of St. Petersburg, and also in amusement parks.

In 1887 Odhner was granted official permission to open his own workshop, which will later on become the W. T. Odhner factory in St. Petersburg (see the nearby image). In the beginning, the only machine in the workshop was an old pedal-driven lathe and several workers. In 1889, a cousin of Odhner, engineer Valentin Odhner, who had graduated from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, joined the staff. Odhner’s elder son, Alexander, was the commercial assistant. In 1890, when the production of arithmometers began, the workshop had one 2 H.P. steam engine, the number of workers was 20, and the annual production value was 11000 rubles. Only two years later, in 1892, the workshop had one 4 H.P. petroleum motor, 20 various lathes, 25 workmen and 10 children, and an annual production value of 30000 rubles.

In 1890 Odhner took all the rights for his machine from Königsberger and was granted a new Russian patent for an improved machine. The input was now read from the cover, not from the pinwheels and the clearing mechanism of the revolution register (counter) was better. Inside the calculator, Odhner had added an extra pinion between the pinwheel and the number wheel. The pinwheel is also more compact than the previous version and resembles much Wertheimber’s 1843 patent. The patents were also registered in France (№261806, 1890), Luxemburg (1890), Belgium (№91812, 1890), Sweden (№3264, 1890), Norway (№2117, 1890), Austria-Hungary (№45538, 1890), England (№13700, 1891), Germany (№64925, 1891), Switzerland (№4578, 1892), and USA (№514725, 1894). In 1893 the arithmometer was exhibited with success at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In 1890 Odhner started a powerful publicity campaign for his new calculator and mass production of the machine.

The prices of 11 and 13-digit arithmometers were 75 and 100 rubles (100 rubles was a good month’s salary at this time). In Germany, the price of the Brunsviga was 300 marks, corresponding to 150 rubles. At the same time, the price of a 16-digit Thomas arithmometer in St. Petersburg was 300 rubles, while a 16-digit Layton arithmometer (system Tate) cost as much as 800 rubles. 500 calculators were produced during the first two production years—1890-1891. Until 1895 were produced 1500 calculators. Two years later the number of produced machines was 5000, and the machine started to receive international awards and medals at exhibitions. The production of Odhner type machines under different names in different countries continues as late as the 1970s.

1892 was the year when Odhner finally quit his work at the Expedition and devoted his time entirely to his workshop. After 14 years in a secure position, this was a great change. More room was needed for growing production, but for that purpose, a capital was also required. Because Odhner did not have money, he took an Englishman, Frank Hill, as his partner and they founded Mechanical Factory of Odhner & Hill. The new company expanded swiftly. In 1893, the effect of the new factory building and other investments can be seen clearly—there were now 98 workers and two steam engines with a total capacity of 20 H.P., the annual value of production being 123000 rubles.

In 1895 Odhner decided to break the partnership with Hill. The brief duration of this partnership suggests that he was not a very co-operative person. In addition, his earlier projects with Nobel and Königsberger were also not very successful. In 1892, the production license of the improved 1890 version was sold to Grimme, Natalis & Co. in Braunschweig, Germany which chose the name Brunsviga for the calculator. The investment cost 10000 German marks plus 10 marks royalty for each calculator sold. This was a quite good income for Odhner even though the source claims that Odhner sold the licenses too cheaply. When Grimme, Natalis & Co. also had to start their production from scratch, it is no wonder that the company did not pay any dividends in 1890-1903. The Brunsviga had a market success, as until 1912 were produced and sold over 20000 machines, Brunsviga machine remained in production until 1958. The success of Brunsviga and all Odhner’s type calculators is due to their simple construction, reliability, and reasonable price.

The production palette of Odhner’s factory varied and of the various products, one can mention cigarette machines designed by Odhner capable of producing 4000 cigarettes in an hour, Orlov printing presses, small mechanical precision instruments and castings of brass, aluminum, and cast iron. In addition to these, other production included turnstiles for ships and amusement parks, control systems for trains, gramophones, and on the military side, sights, rangefinders, and munitions cartridges for artillery. The bestseller of the Odhner’s factory certainly was not the arithmometer, but the Orlov printing press.

The production of the machine gradually increased. Before the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese war Odhner’s factory received great orders from the Government, for fine machinery connected with guns. These orders made Odhner quite a wealthy man, but at the very end of his life.

Willgodt Odhner died on 2 September 1905, from a heart illness. After Odhner’s death his sons Alexander Hjalmer (1873-1918) and Georg Willgodt (1880-1910), and his son-in-law Karl Sievert (married to his daughter Julie Ida (1882-1970)), continued the production and about 29000 calculators were made until the factory was forced to close down in 1917, and moved their operations to Sweden. The new Swedish company was named AB Original-Odhner, and a new factory was built in Gothenburg. In 1942 the company was bought by AB Åtvidabergs Industrier. Odhner´s calculator was popular around the world and was manufactured until the 1970s when cheap and simple electronic mini-calculators came onto the market.