Category: Timeline Stories

In 1909 the young inventor James Hunter Bassett (1888–1932) from Chicago, Illinois, started the production of adding device, quite similar in construction to the earlier Ribbon Adder of Charles Webb. In contrast with Ribbon Adder, however, the device of Bassett (called Bassett Adder) had much better market success (at the beginning of 1915, an ad claimed “Many thousands sold”).

Bassett Adder is a continuous band adding machine, which was in production from 1909 till the end of the 1930s. It was a small pocket-sized adder resembling a tobacco tin, with eight digital positions. Its dimensions are: 10,8 x 7,5 x 2,2 cm, the weight is 80 g.

There were at least two models of the Bassett Adder. The first is made entirely of wood, paper, and celluloid. On this simple device, numbers are entered with a stylus by pulling down the perforated bands in each column. The user must pay attention, however. Every band has a black mark between each tenth hole. When pulling down a band using a hole above a black mark, one must remember to add one to the adjacent left column for the carry.

The second Bassett Adder (see the upper image) is more complex. It has a wooden core with celluloid number bands, but it is encased in tin (there are devices with an exterior of sturdy woven paper or treated thin cloth). The second device has an automatic feature to remind users to carry their tens—a red flag appearing in the column to the left signaling when it is necessary to carry.

In 1911 Bassett advertised the device in Scientific American magazine as the “Bassett $1.00 adder” sold by J.H. Bassett & Co. of Chicago. In an ad from 1913 (see the nearby image) the inventor claimed “Over 17,000 sold.”, which is a remarkable market success.

Some of the devices, produced by Bassett are inscribed Patent applied for or Patent pending, but Bassett never managed to take a patent for this device (Charles Webb also had problems receiving a patent for his Ribbon Adder, obviously US patent officers were very strict at that time). Besides the company of Bassett, there are at least four other companies, which manufactured and sold the device. It was advertised from 1909 as “Clark’s New Adder,” a product of the Glenn C. Clark Manufacturing Co. of Chicago. In another ad from 1910, it is described as the “$1.00 ADDER,” sold by Commercial Specialities Agency of Chicago. In 1911, it was advertised by Timesaver Co., Chicago, under the name Speed. In the 1920s the device was sold by Johnson Smith & Co. of Racine, Wisconsin.

Biography of James Basset

Very little is known about James Hunter Bassett (also listed as James Francis Bassett). He was born on 13 April 1888, in Chicago, to Dr. Charles Francis Bassett (born 10 Aug. 1851 in Denmark, Iowa—died 1940 in Pasadena, California), a physician, and Clara Dwight Hunter (born Dec. 1864), who married on 27 Apr 1882. James had an elder sister, Enid Dora Bassett (Morse by marriage) (born 15 Feb. 1885—died Aug. 1950).

Bassett family descends from the early settler William Bassett (c. 1590–1667) of Plymouth, a native from Sandwich, Kent, who emigrated to America in 1621 and was involved in many colony governmental activities and business ventures. James Hunter Bassett was a 9^th generation descendant of that notorious William Bassett.

James Hunter Bassett died in 1932 in Chicago.

Around 1874, the Russian military engineer from Sankt Peterburg, captain Juri I. Diakov (Юрiй И. Дьяковъ), devised a simple row adder, one of many adding devices based on Abaque Rhabdologique of Claude Perrault. However, unlike the abacus of Perrault, the device of Diakov used endless bands, moved during the calculations repeatedly in one or another direction.

This simple and cheap device, called новаго рода счёты (New Type of Abacus), went into production in the late 1870s (see the lower image of a device from the 1880s). It is believed that Diakov was the inventor of several interesting calculating devices, which were granted a medal at the 1878 Exposition Universelle in Paris.

The abacus of Juri Diakov was a finger-operated calculating (adding and subtracting) device (dimensions 33 x 31 x 3 cm) with a carry indication. Carry needs to be enforced manually, as a black field indicates carry needs to be added on the next position. (Thank you Walter Szrek).

On 16 September 1880, Juri Diakov applied to the Russian Department of Trade and Manufacture for a 3-years (later in 1881 prolonged for 10 years) privilege (привилегия, i.e. patent) for the device. The privilege №8937 was granted on 16 November 1881. It seems the device achieved considerable market success until 1881 because the state tax for the privilege was quite big—450 rubles.

In the patent application (see the Privilege of Diakov) the device, named here “new type abacus” (новаго рода счеты), (see the lower patent drawing) was described as:
…new type abacus, using endless bands, moved during the calculations repeatedly in one direction. As a matter of fact, the essence of the device is a circular, unlimited movement, in one or another direction…

The principle of Diakov’s abacus will be further improved some ten years later in the Ribbon Adder of Charles Henry Webb, and later in several other adding devices like the popular Basset Adder from the beginning of the 20^th century.

The American poet, author, and journalist Charles Henry Webb (1834–1905) from New York was a holder of several patents for calculating devices. First was the USA patent №75322 from 10 March 1868, for an adding-machine. Later (in November 1889) he took out two other patents for an improved version of the same device, pat. №414335 (granted to his assignor L. Smith), and pat. №414959.

Charles Webb was a holder of two other patents for a different adding machine, the so-called Ribbon Adder. The second machine Webb devised in 1886 when applied for USA and English patents, but he had some problems with the application, and was granted a patent for this device first in England in 1888, then in the USA (pat. №465120 from 1891).

Both calculating devices of Webb gained some popularity and had been manufactured and sold, although with moderate market success, so they deserve our attention. Let’s examine them:

Webb’s First Adding Machine
The first adding machine of Webb (it was bombastically advertised as ONLY PRACTICAL ADDING MACHINE IN THE WORLD:-), patented in 1868 in the USA (patent №75322), and also in France (brevet N°86774 from 1869), was advertised intensely and was manufactured with moderate market success in 1869-70 from his company Webb Adding Machine Co., New York. Later (in the 1890s) the improved version of the device (see the photo below), was manufactured by another Webb’s company—Webb’s Adder Co., New York.

The Webb’s Adder was offered for sale in 1869 advertisements at $6.00 (brass), $8.00 (with steel cam and stop) or $10.00 (steel plated throughout), the 1890-92 price was $7 (it was not a cheap device for the time, because $6-7 would have been one or two weeks’ wages for many people then.)

One of the interesting features of Webb’s Adder is the stored-energy carry. The simpler adders use straightforward gearing to make the carry operation—each gear has a single tooth that engages the next gear up when it completes a full revolution. The problem with this is that it takes some force to drive the gear train, especially when adding 1 to a number like 9999, since the stylus has to rotate all the gears at once. The first inventor to solve this problem was Blaise Pascal , who devised a sequential carry mechanism, where each gear passed the carry under its own power. Webb’s adder has only one carry transfer position, but it uses a similar idea. In his implementation of stored-energy carry the energy to move the higher wheel is accumulated gradually during the entire turn of the lower wheel, by slowly compressing a spring. At the moment of the carry (when the big dial goes from 99 to 0) the spring is released and its force increments the small dial. This force still derives from the operator’s fingers, but it has been fed in gradually and is barely felt, thus the carry seems to happen by itself.

Let’s see the description of the device from the advertisement in the journal Scientific American from 27 February 1869:
We have an innate and hereditary hatred of all of the order ophidian, and we much doubted the expediency of receiving Mr. Webb’s reptile into our office, but having seen the animal and found it was no ‘snake’ whose head was to be crushed, but an industrious little device calculated to save head-wear, we welcomed it cordially. Its appearance is similar to the accompanying engraving (see the nearby image), the implement, however, being larger, measuring about six and three-quarter inches long by about five inches across the widest place. The form is seen in the engraving. A large disk, A, and a small one, B, both revolving, and both graduated around the circumference and marked with figures in two concentric circles, are seated in a case and and partially covered with a metallic plate, leaving only the inner circle of figures exposed, except at a small opening between the two disks, where one set of figures, on the outer circle of each, is seen through the slot in the plate. The plate around the larger disk is marked from 0 to 99 the correspond with similar numbers on the disk’s concentric circles. The smaller disk has 50 numbers, from 0 to 50, with a corresponding segment of numbers (units) from 0 to 9 ranging from the opening in the plate or cover back around a portion of the smaller circle. The larger disk has on its under side a ratchet with a single tooth and the smaller one a ratchet of fifty teeth. A connection is made between the two by a spring pawl so that one entire revolution of the large disk will move the small one one-fiftieth of its circumference. The operation may be comprehended by the above description of the parts. The Inventor believes that it is a great aid to accountants, substituting a merely mechanical process for mental or brain labor. Certainly if his manipulation of the device, and the opinions of these who have given it a trial are to be considered, the implement should be estimated as a valuable adjunct to the means of summing up wearisome columns of figures. It may be let in flush with the surface of a desk so that the accountant, or clerk, may always have it at his elbow, working it with one hand while keeping his place in the columns of figures with the other. It is neat, handy, and presentable, but although it will add numbers rapidly, it is doubtful if it will add to a man’s fortune or to his family. With this drawback we can indorse the adder. Orders for the implement or for explanatory circulars should be addressed to the patentee, C. H. Webb, 571 Broadway, New York city.

Webb’s Ribbon Adder
The second calculating device of Webb was the so-called Ribbon Adder.

Several people experimented with versions of simple mechanical calculators, that involved strips of metal with numbers marked on them mounted in a frame, where a pen (stylus) was used to slide these strips up and down. A few names that usually rise to the top of the pile in this regard are Claude Perrault, who invented the first form of this class of devices sometime around 1670, and César Caze, who created his version—nouvelle machine arithmétique at the beginning of 1700s. Then around 1874 the Russian Юрiй И. Дьяковъ (Juri I. Diakov), in his new type of abacus (новаго рода счеты), suggested that one might represent numbers on an adder by a set of continuous bands.

Charles Webb picked up the idea of Diakov and devised his quite clever device in the middle of the 1880s. He applied for a patent in the USA in 1886, received one in England in 1888, and patented his ribbon adder in America in 1891 (see pat. №465120).

Webb however had some problems with the patent of this device. When he overcame the delays associated with patent problems and obtained the patent, the depression of 1893 proved more than he could handle. Webb’s Ribbon Adder didn’t reach the market success of the first adder and soon disappeared from the market. However, its principle was later successfully implemented in devices like Bassett Adder, which was in production from 1909 till the end of the 1930s.

This chrome-encased instrument (see the nearby photo), with overall dimensions: 5.3 cm x 14.3 cm x 15.5 cm, has eight grooves for entering the digits of numbers with a stylus. The grooves are labeled 1-to-20 on the housing, giving a user the curious “convenience” of being able to add up to 20 in a single stroke. Inside, beneath the grooves, are long metal ribbons with regularly spaced holes. The holes are numbered to their right with the digits from 0 to 9 repeating sequentially all along the ribbon. These digits appear in windows below the grooves as amounts are entered. The same holes are also numbered to their left, with a total of 10 holes numbered 0, ten 1’s, ten 2’s, and so forth up to ten holes numbered on the left 29. These figures appear in windows at the top of the grooves and represent numbers to be carried. To enter a number, one pulls down the ribbons for its digits. The corresponding total appears in windows below the grooves. Digits appearing in the windows at the top must be carried into the adjacent left column. Any one strip of this adder can be used to add sums totaling 299, or to enter a 9 and carry 29.

Biography of Charles Webb

Charles Henry Webb was born at Rouse’s Point, a village in Clinton County, northern New York state (near the Canadian border), on 24 January 1834. He was the son of Nathan Webb III (1790–1863), and Philena King (Paddock) Webb (2 July 1801–5 Apr. 1890) from Barre, Vermont. Nathan and Philena Webb married in 1827 and had (at least) five sons: Nathan F. (succeeded his father as a merchant), Charles Henry (1834-1905, our hero), Thaddeus Osgood (1836-1837, died aged 11 months of consumption), William Edward (1838-1906, became war correspondent, railroad land baron, town founder, Kansas legislator, adventurer, author, and mining engineer), and Robert Lesslie (1840-).

Nathan Webb III was born on 20 Nov. 1790 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to Nathan Webb II (1765-1818), and Mary “Polly” McKnight (1767-1813). Nathan Webb II was a native of Connecticut and representative of an old and honored New England family, which was ably represented in the early wars of the colonies, the French and Indian war, and the war of the American Revolution. Nathan Webb (the father of Charles) was a reputable local citizen, a farmer, merchant, and owner of a general store in Rouse’s Point, who used to serve also as а postmaster, president of the temperance society, and vice-president of the agricultural society. In 1829 and on, a horse boat ferry, owned by Nathan Webb, was run to the Vermont shore—it was a novelty. He died on 18 March 1863, in Wabasha, Minnesota.

Charles Webb received his preliminary education in his native place, but he was an unruly boy and in his early youth, he ran away to sea. He was absent for more than three years, whaling in the South Seas and in the Arctic. On his return Webb went to Illinois, to which state his parents had removed in the meantime. Then he had been engaged in business on the banks of the Mississippi river from 1856 till 1860, dealt subsequently in wheat in Chicago, took part in the American Civil War (where he covered the front lines for the newspaper New York Times), and at a later period was a banker and broker in Wall street, New York.

After starting his career as a journalist in the newspaper New York Times in the beginning of the 1860s, in April 1862, Webb moved to San Francisco, California, and became literary editor of the San Francisco Bulletin, before becoming the highest paid contributor to The Golden Era under pen names like “Inigo” and “John Paul”. While in San Francisco, he was also a notorious womanizer and lived at the Occidental Hotel among the ‘fast set’ of urban bachelors. At the beginning of 1864, he started a paper of his own, named The Californian, a weekly. Webb’s irreverent tone and burlesques of California life and Californians, however, were not successful, so in 1866 he left The Californian and returned to the East Coast.

Besides the calculating devices, which have been already examined in this article, in 1874 Webb invented, patented, and manufactured a cartridge-loading machine, the utility of which was recognized by the manufacturers of firearms and others.

Webb was a friend of Mark Twain and when Twain had difficulty finding a publisher for his first collection of sketches, Webb offered to take on the project himself. Webb served as both editor and publisher for The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches. When it was released under the American News Company imprint in 1867, Twain reported to a newspaper, “[Webb] has gotten it up in excellent style, and has done everything to suit his own taste, which is excellent. I have made no suggestions.”

Webb was known for his humorous social criticism and published several travesties and plays. In 1867, he wrote Liffith Lank, or Lunacy (1867), a parody of Charles Reade’s Griffith Gaunt. In 1868, he wrote St. Twel’mo, or the Cuneiform Cyclopedist of Chattanooga, a parody of the novel St. Elmo by Augusta Evans Wilson which had sold over a million copies within four months of its publication the year before.

Charles Webb married early in the seventies to Elizabeth S. Wall Webb (1844–1908) of Brooklyn, daughter of one of its most prominent and wealthy citizens, and they had one son—Charles Webb Jr. (1875–1937).

Charles Henry Webb died at his home, 328 West 57^th Street, New York, on 24 May 1905. He was remembered for his exquisite work described as: “the quality of his verse is high; the wit, which is expressive, is unsurpassed by the work of any of his contemporaries, not forgetting that Oliver Wendell Holmes was among them” (The New York Times, June 4, 1905).

Thomas Strode (1810–1880), a storekeeper and farmer from Coatesville, Chester county, Pennsylvania, was a holder of three patents for calculating devices: US patent №30264 from 1860 for an adding machine (calculator), similar to Calculating Clock of Schickard and Pascaline of Blaise Pascal, and two patents for circular stylus-operated adding machines (patents №49168 from 1865 and №74170 from 1868).

The adding machine from the first patent of Strode is a pin-operated device with four (or more) wheels. Each of the wheels is provided with ten teeth and a carrying tooth (of course, the leftmost wheel doesn’t have a carrying tooth). Numbers are entered into the device by inserting a pin into the circular plate of the corresponding wheel and rotating until the pin strikes the connecting strip. There is no zeroing mechanism provided, so the wheels must be zeroed manually.

The last patent of Strode (US74170) is for a circular stylus-operated adding device, the patent model of which survived to our time, and is kept in the collection of the National Museum of American History, Washington D.C. (see the lower image).

It is a wood, paper, and metal device, with overall measurements: 1.8 cm x 16.7 cm x 26 cm.

The outer edge of the paddle is divided clockwise into marked in ink 100 parts. Five concentric metal discs (held together in the middle by a screw) are atop the paddle, each one slightly smaller than the one below.

The first disc above the paddle has 100 holes around the edge and rotates. The second disc is fixed, with the numbers from 1 to 97 marked in pen counterclockwise around the edge (a few higher digits are hidden). The third disc is toothed, and has the numbers from 1 to 100 around its edge, inside the teeth. The fourth disc covers the third one, with one notch that reveals a number on the toothed disc. The fourth disc also has 100 holes around its edge. Just inside these holes is the fifth, top disc. It also is divided into 100 parts around the edge, marked in pen from 1 to 50 going counterclockwise on the right side, and from 1 to 47 going clockwise around the left side (a few divisions are unmarked).

The first disc is intended to represent sums of numbers up to 100 (cents), and to carry a term to advance the third disc, which represents hundreds (dollars). The smallest disc can be used as a guide in adding or subtracting hundreds.

Biography of Thomas Strode

Thomas T. Strode was born on 11 February 1810, in Coatesville, Chester county, Pennsylvania. He was the second child of William Strode (26 Dec. 1782—25 Dec. 1851), a farmer, son of Richard Strode and Ruth (Shields) Strode, and Elizabeth Strode (7 Jan. 1787—1 Apr. 1861). He had an elder brother, Richard (1808-1848), and a younger brother and five sisters—Elizabeth (b. 1818), Ruthanna (b. 1820), David James (1822–1848), Mary Ann (b. 1825), Hannah (1830-1856), and Caroline (1833-1883).

Thomas T. Strode was an heir 6^th generation of the early settler George Strode (1654–1698), a grocer from Millbrook, Hampshire, England, who emigrated to the New World about 1682 with his family, and settled in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Many generations Strodes left their mark around West Chester. Strode’s Mill, a property of Strodes from 1737 until 1878 is still preserved and is part of Strode’s Mill Historic District, a national historic district located in East Bradford Township. Besides Strode’s Mill (see the nearby photo), Strode’s Mill Historic District includes Strode Farm, Strode’s Pork Products plant, and other buildings.

Thomas Strode worked as a storekeeper and farmer around Coatesville (in some of the patents he was specified as living in Mortonville, a hamlet near Coatesville). He must have been a very inventive man, because, besides the three above-mentioned patents for calculating devices, he took out five other US patents—two patents for calendar clocks (US30166 and US49169), a machine for boring holes (US8569), an excavator (US152882), and grain winnower and weigher (US8763).

Thomas T. Strode died on 19 March 1880, in Mortonville, Pennsylvania.

At the end of the 1860s, John Groesbeck (1833-1884), a consulting accountant from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and many years a teacher and principal of Crittenden’s Philadelphia Commercial College devised a simple adding machine, for which he took out a US patent №100288 on 1 March 1870. Although in small quantities, the machine went into serial production in the early 1870s.

The adding device of Groesbeck was not of original construction. Similar contrivances were made earlier in the 1840s in Europe by David Roth and Chaim Slonimski, there were also US patents for such devices, e.g. John Campbell (US pat. №24990) in 1859, and Thomas Strode (pat. №US30264) in 1860.

The Groesbeck’s Calculating Machine was advertised in newspapers in the early 1870s (see the nearby image) and was manufactured by the company Ziegler & McCurdy, Philadelphia, and distributed by S. H. Crittenden & Co (Salmon Hodges Crittenden (1829-1864), was the brother of Samuel Worcester Crittenden (1824-1884), the founder of Crittenden’s Philadelphia Commercial College. Samuel was principal from 1844 to 1852, but then devoted himself to the work of the ministry, and from time to time afterward assisted his brother who succeeded him at the College). The device was sold for $6.00 in 1871. However, it seems the calculator was never widely sold and production soon ceased (Ziegler & McCurdy Co. was dissolved in 1872).

The original patent had three digital positions only, but actually, the machine was manufactured with more, usually five, digital positions. There are also other differences between the patented and the real-life device, e.g. the wheels in the patent are stepped (each wheel is on a different level), while in the real device, all wheels are on the same level (large wheels are tilted to the left so that successive gears are no top of the ones to the right). Also, the subtraction option is not shown in the patent.

The Groesbeck’s Calculating Machine is a row-adding device, made of brass (the mechanism), nickel-plated brass (the outer casing), and steel (the pivots of the gears), with measurements: 8 cm x 16.8 cm x 7.5 cm. It has (usually) five dials and corresponding result digits, and numbers can be added to any one of the dials.

The device doesn’t have a clearing mechanism (i. e. it must be cleared manually) and can be used not only for addition but for subtraction also (the bottom row of five small windows shows the results for addition, while the top row of windows is used for subtraction). During the subtraction, however, the initial number must be entered as a complement to 10.

This stylus-operated flat-adding machine (usually) has five cogged and linked wheels. Each wheel has three repetitions of the integers 0 through 9; correspondingly, there are 30 teeth, for an angle of 12⁰ between them. Between big wheels are placed smaller wheels, designed for performing the carry operation. The mechanism also includes detents and other advanced improvements.

The wheels are set by means of a stylus (pointer), which is placed into the concentric slots c, c’, and c” of the cap-plate in Figure 1 from the patent drawing. The result can be seen in the windows d. Actually, there are two rows of result windows, one for adding and another for subtracting—five windows at the bottom show sums of numbers entered, while five result windows at the top show complementary digits and are used in subtraction.

Let’s see how the device and the inventor himself are described in the Pennsylvania School Journal, vol. 19 #7, January 1871, p. 216:

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Groesbeck’s Calculating Machine.
A Practical Brain Saving Invention. Philadelphia: Ziegler & McCurdy. Price, $6.00.
Webb’s ‘Rapid Adder’ is distanced by this Quaker City invention. The inventor, Mr. Groesbeck, of the firm of S. H. Crittenden & Co., is the quiet, methodical gentleman who manages the business of their well-known Commercial College on Chestnut-st. He is also the author of Crittenden’s ‘Commercial Arithmetic and Business Manual’, recently published, of which nearly a dozen editions have already been sold. He is a born mathematician—loves figures as Long Tom Coffin loved the sea—and in this machine has put into cog-wheels and pinions an idea that has long engaged his attention. The machine will do what he claims for it. We have tested it; so have our friends; so have our pupils. It is constructed on strictly scientific principles, and is so simple that a boy of average ability can understand and operate it. It will add with absolute certainty, taking from one to five columns of figures at a time, carrying and borrowing its own tens, hundreds, etc., without any thought or care on the part of the operator. It will also take the difference between columns with equal certainty. The machine is about six inches in length, two and a half in width, and a quarter of an inch in depth, a convenient size for use or for carrying about. It is solid metal, silver-plated, and in all respects a finished piece of mechanism.

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Biography of John Groesbeck

Little is known about John Groesbeck, the inventor of this simple, but solid, reliable, and perfectly working adding device.

John W. Groesbeck was born on 11 November 1833 in Schaghticoke, a small town in Rensselaer County, New York, United States. He was a descendant of one of the earliest and most prolific families in the area. The Groesbecks came to Schaghticoke in the early 1700s, living first in the area around the Knickerbocker Mansion, but expanding to live and farm all over town. We don’t know where John was educated (obviously he studied mathematics), but in the middle 1850s, we found him in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he used to work as a consulting accountant and married the local girl Catherine Rodgers (1829–1909), the daughter of Hugh Rodgers, and Catherine McMullen. They had two daughters: Lurena Devoe Groesbeck (Wallace by marriage) (1857–1920), and Katharine Rodgers Groesbeck (Red by marriage) (1865–1900).

In 1857 John Groesbeck was hired as a teacher (Professor of book-keeping and phonography) at Crittenden’s Philadelphia Commercial College. Several years later he became the Principal of the College and worked there for many years until his death.

Groesbeck is also known as the author of several books on commercial arithmetic, for instance, The Crittenden Commercial Arithmetic and Business Manual, published for the first time in Philadelphia in 1867, and still in use (there are countless editions of this book, the last one is from 2019!)

John Groesbeck died on 7 January 1884 and was buried in Woodlands Cemetery, Philadelphia.

The Swedish born, American civil engineer, inventor, and author John William Nystrom (1825–1885) (born as Johan Vilhelm Nyström) is known as the author of many books and inventions, among them, an interesting calculating device (a slide rule, a type of mechanical analog computer), invented in 1848 and patented on 3 March 1851. Nystrom was a Swedish engineer, who emigrated to the New World in the middle 1840s and settled in Philadelphia, embarking on a career primarily focused on nautical engineering and steam vessels. The complicated and repetitive calculations required for propeller and propulsion designs evolved into the development of his calculating machine.

The calculating  device of Nystrom (see the nearby drawing from patent US7961) was a circular slide rule/calculator, based on logarithms, and was promoted for use not only in addition and subtraction, but also in multiplication and division. The device was presented and received a First Premium at the Franklin Institute Exhibition of 1849.

Nystrom promoted the device as the merchant will find this calculating machine to be all they desire and solicited a manufacturer in the 17 May 1851, issue of Scientific American, hailing it as the most important one ever brought before the public. By 1852, Nystrom offered the device at three prices—$10.00, $15.00, and $20.00 (a huge sum at that time), and initially, he was likely making the instrument himself. Later in the 1850s it was manufactured and sold in Philadelphia by James W.  Queen, and by George Thorsted in New York, and from 1864 to 1887 by William J. Young, one of the most prolific American instrument makers in the 19th century (totally about one hundred devices sold).

Let’s see how the inventor himself describes the device in his popular Pocket Book of Mechanics and Engineering (first published in 1854, this book had 27 editions published between 1854 and 2012 in English):
The device consists of a silvered brass plate of about nine inches in diameter, on which are fixed two movable arms, extending from the centre to the periphery. On the plate are engraved a number of curved lines in such form and divisions that with their intersection with the arms, the most complicated calculations can be performed almost instantly.
The arrangement for trigonometrical calculations is such that it is not necessary to notice the functions sine, cosine, tangent, etc., operating only by the angle expressed in degrees and minutes, and without any tables, which makes it so easy that anyone who can read figures, will be able to solve trigonometrical questions. Any kind of calculations can be performed on this instrument, no matter how complicated it may be, whilst there is nothing intricate in its use. The author, who is the inventor of the calculator, has thoroughly tested its practical utility. All the calculations in Nystrom’s Pocket Book of Mechanics and Engineering have been computed by this instrument…

There is also a detailed description of the device in a 42-pages book from 1854 (see description of Nystrom’s Calculator).

The patent model of Nystrom’s Calculator is still preserved in the collection of the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. (see the nearby image).

The surface of the device is a brass disc that rests on three wooden feet. It has two graduated brass arms, pivoted about a central spindle, which may be clamped to any desired angular separation and rotated together. Glass magnifiers are attached to both arms. A small dial on the top of the central knob can be moved to record rotations of more than one full circle.

There are four unlabeled circles on the calculating rule, called a, b, c, and d. They go from the outer rim inward. Circle b is divided into 20 equal parts. Subdivisions of these parts are represented by a series of parallel curves extending between the outer rim and circle b. These, in combination with scales marked on the rim of the arms, allow one to measure subdivisions of the distance between equal parts. The outermost circle a is a logarithmic scale ranging from 1 to 10 twice. A series of lines between the two outer circles give intermediate values, which are read from the rotating arms. The circle c, just inside b, is divided from 0 to 90 degrees so that the sine of an angle indicated is given on the outer circle a. The parts of the scale are unequal, with the tens value of degrees from 10 to 49 indicated by large digits. The innermost circle d is divided for finding cosines.

Biography of John Nystrom

John William Nystrom was born in 1824 in Småland province, Sweden, as Johan Vilhelm Nyström. After receiving his engineering degree from Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (Royal Technological Institute) in Stockholm, in the middle 1840s, he emigrated to America (he became a US citizen in 1854) and settled in Philadelphia, embarking on a career primarily focused on nautical engineering and steam vessels.

In 1859 Nystrom proposed a hexadecimal (base 16) system of notation, arithmetic, and metrology called the Tonal System. The system was described in a book from 1862 and in addition to new weights and measures, his proposal included a new calendar with sixteen months, a new system of coinage, and a hexadecimal clock with sixteen hours in a day. In 1875, Nystrom proposed a new duodecimal (base 12) system of notation, arithmetic, and metrology called the Duodenal System.

While in Philadelphia, Nystrom became a protégé of William Sellers (1824-1905) (see the nearby photo), a mechanical engineer, manufacturer, businessman, and inventor who filed more than 90 patents, president of the Franklin Institute, and for many years, head of the machine tool firm of William Sellers & Co., which was a very influential machine tool builder during the latter half of the 19th century.

Nystrom became an Assistant Secretary and Chief Engineer of the US Navy during the Civil War. He also spent a number of years abroad, advising both Russian (in the end of 1850s he was appointed as engineer in chief to the Volga-Don Railway and Don-Azoph Steam Navigation Company, Consulting Engineer to the Russian Steam Navigation and Trading, and designed a hydraulic pontoon-doc in Sankt-Peterburg), and Peruvian governments on their operation and deployment of steamships. Later on, he returned to the USA and spent his remaining years in Philadelphia, being quite active in the affairs of the Franklin Institute, as a member of the board and chairman.

Nystrom was the author of many other books and inventions besides the above-mentioned, such as: steam engines, refrigerator, hydraulic pontoon-dock, centripetal propeller, eye-pieces for telescopes, and others.

John William Nystrom died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 11 May 1885, at the age of 61.

Frank Stephen Baldwin (1838-1925), a native of Connecticut, devoted almost all his life to inventing and manufacturing machines. He applied for his first patent in 1855, only 17 years old, and took out numerous patents over the next several decades. At the beginning of the 1870s, while visiting the office of a life insurance company in St. Louis, Baldwin had seen the Thomas type of calculating machine, and contrived the plan of creating his own calculating device with better construction, substituting one cylinder for the nine cylinders in that machine.

On 8 Sep. 1873, Baldwin applied for his first patent for a pin-wheel calculating machine, but it seems there was a problem with this application, because the patent was granted as late as 2 Feb. 1875. Waiting for this patent, on 1 Apr. 1874, Baldwin applied for a simpler calculating machine (which the inventor named Arithmometer), and this time the patent was granted much faster, on 28 July 1874. In the same 1874, Baldwin placed both machines on an exhibition at the Franklin Institute, where a committee of John Nystrom, John Groesbeck, and Pliny Earle Chase commented favorably on the smaller machine. That’s why it was awarded the John Scott Medal for the most meritorious invention of the year 1874.

Later in his life, Frank Baldwin will receive many other patents for calculating devices, but we are going to examine only the first two machines of this remarkable inventor.

The Arithmometer of Frank Baldwin

The first (patented) calculating machine (see US patent 153522) of Frank Baldwin (so-called Arithmometer) was a simpler (compared to the second) machine, but it proved to be a very useful and reliable device. It was successfully manufactured and sold, although in small numbers (reportedly Baldwin managed to sell one of his machines to a railroad office). Let’s examine it.

The Arithmometer of Frank Baldwin was a steel and brass device, with measurements: 2 cm x 13 cm x 11.3 cm.

The device’s back is roughly a half-disc, with the digits from 0 to 9 engraved across the top. A steel arrow rotates to point to any one of these digits. Rotating a brass knob returns the arrow to place. The knob is linked by gears to a small movable carriage (hinged casing) at the base of the device. Returning the knob to its original position rotates two small register wheels. One of the wheels (upper) records the sum of the number entered and the number already set in the wheels (used in addition). The other wheel (lower) records the complement of this number (used in subtraction). The machine described in the patent has four sets of register wheels, linked to one another so that the machine carries, thus the machine can add numbers up to 9999, although the machine in the upper photo has six sets of register wheels, so the machine can add numbers up to 999999.

The Arithmometer can be used for adding a column of figures, e.g. if we want to add three numbers: 345, 678, and 812, we have to add firstly the units column (5+8+2=15), then to move the hinged casing in the lower part of the machine to the right, in order to engage the input mechanism with a result (register) wheel of higher degree. Then we have to enter the tens column (4+7+1=12×10=120), to move again the hinged casing to the right, and to add the hundreds column (3+6+8=17×100=1700). Thus we will have the total result (15+120+1700=1835) at the higher (marked Add) set of wheels.

The pin-wheel calculating machine of Frank Baldwin

The second (patented) calculating machine (see US patent 159244) of Frank Baldwin is a more elaborate device, based on the well-known pin-wheel mechanism created by Leibniz in 1672, then reinvented by Poleni in 1709, Braun in 1727, Staffel, Roth, and others in the 1840s. It is unknown however if Baldwin knew about the other inventors, but especially the machine of Staffel was well-known in the English-speaking world after its success in the Great Exhibition of London in 1851.

Let’s examine the principle of work of the calculating machine of Baldwin, viewing the patent drawing of the first machine (see the upper image):
The basic mechanism of the machine can be divided into three parts:
1. The counter drums (marked with E in the patent drawing), which consist of a basic drum, containing the teeth h, and sector segment F. In the normal position, the teeth are hidden in the body of the drum by means of a spring. If the sector segment F will be rotated by means of the lever g, then one or more teeth will be pushed out of the body of the drum by the springs, and the number of these teeth will depend on the angle of rotation of the segment. Thus during the rotation of the crank, which rotates the pin-wheel drum, different number of teeth will be engaged with the pinion M, and different number will be transferred to the resulting mechanism.
The mechanism with the counter drums is separated from the other mechanisms and can be moved leftwards and rightwards by means of a slider (in contrast for example of the other famous machine of this class, Odhner’s, in which mechanism can be rotated not counter, but registering mechanism). This movement is necessary during the multiplication and division.

2. After the number has been entered, then must be rotated to one revolution the main handle and 9-teeth registering drums J will be rotated to so many steps, according to the erected teeth of the particular counter drum.

3. Another group of registering drums N is connected with the mechanism in such a manner, that it serves as a revolution-counter of the particular counter-drum, which is necessary during the multiplication and division.

In his first patent, Baldwin proposed also a ribbon-printing device to be used for printing the result on paper. This idea however will be realized as late as 1908, when was patented Baldwin Recording Calculator, which combined the listing machine with the calculator.

After the successful sale of the first ten produced manually devices, Baldwin tried to manufacture and sell his machine in the factory, but without success. The demand for such machines was too low yet.

Frank Baldwin tried repeatedly to improve his machine and took out other patents, in 1902 and 1904 for an improved pin-wheel machine, in 1905 for a machine with a keyboard (see the nearby photo), and in 1908 for the above-mentioned machine with a printing mechanism.

The success came to Baldwin at the end of his life, in 1911, when he received financial support from the young businessman Jay Randolph Monroe (1883-1937), and in 1912 they created the Monroe Calculator Company. Baldwin had developed a machine that combined the best features of the calculators of the time—the four-function arithmetic capabilities of the stepped-drum and pin-wheel machines, and the rapid keyboard setting of the key-driven Comptometer. Monroe recognized the possibilities and established a company to bring the machine to market.

Biography of Frank Stephen Baldwin

Frank (A.K.A. Franklin) Stephen Baldwin was born on 10 April 1838, in New Hartford, Litchfield County, Connecticut, in the family (of 5 children) of the master builder Stephen Franklin Baldwin (1800-1881), an owner of architectural business, and Julia (Pardee) Baldwin (1803-1878), both of New England stock. Stephen Baldwin was born in Goshen, Litchfield, Conn., to Stephen Baldwin (1758-1810) of Guilford, Conn., and Susannah Adams (1768-1848) of Winchester, Conn. Julia Pardee was born in Milford, New Haven, Conn., to Josiah Pardee (1775-1822) and Comfort Marks (1774-1868).

Although technically not an architect, the master builder Stephen (A.K.A. Steven) Baldwin was a very good professional, known for several buildings in the region, e.g. The Meeting House of First Congregational Church in Watertown, Connecticut (see the nearby image), designed and erected in 1839.

Frank Baldwin devoted almost all his life to inventing and manufacturing machines, especially calculating devices, and was granted many patents. In 1872 Baldwin married Mary K. Denniston (23 Sep. 1848 – 15 July 1928) of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and they had seven children: Frank Pardee (1873–1946), Emma Virginia (1877–1952), Eugene Denniston (1880–?), George Howard (1890–1950), Elbert Stephen (1882–1956), Lillian Isabel (1886–1916), and Blanche Baker (1891–1969).

Besides the many inventions in the field of calculating machines, Baldwin designed many other devices, including: cryptographic device (patented in 1877), cement mixer (1891), roundabout (1892), metal latch to fasten shoes, an anemometer to record wind direction, a step for a street-car to record the number of passengers carried, an arrowhead self-coupler for railroad cars, an indicator for a street-car to show the street name operated from the axle of the car, recording lumber measure machine, and others.

There is a comprehensive interview of Frank Baldwin from 1919, in which he describes the main moments of his life. Look at it:

In the summer of 1840, when I was two years old, my family moved to Nunda, Livingston County, New York.
At Nunda, I attended the first free school instituted by the State of New York. Afterwards, I was graduated from the Nunda Institute, where I had specialized in mathematics. In a class competition, I surprised my teachers by memorizing the decimal of Pi to 128 places, and ever since that time I have been able to write it without effort.
In 1854 I was enrolled at Union College. My course was short-lived, for soon after my entrance, father met with a serious accident, which crippled him for life and forced me to take over the management of his architectural business. I then began experimental work on several ideas. In 1855, I applied for a patent on an arrowhead self-coupler for railroad cars. It was rejected on reference. This rejection only fired my ambition to succeed and perhaps determined my later course in the field of invention.
In 1860, business took me to Fort Wayne, Indiana. An uncle at Carlyle, Illinois, had designed a corn-planter for which I assisted in securing a patent. This was a pioneer of machines of this class. Early in ’61, I went over to Carlyle to build the first model and arrange for the manufacture of the device.
The Civil War broke out and upset my plans. I enlisted in the Carlyle Home Guard, but stress of circumstances brought me back to Fort Wayne after the Three Months. So the war fever in me had to burn itself out in looking after the family.
In 1869, I went to St. Louis as manager of Peck’s Planning Mills. It was at this point I began to devote more and more time toward working out the ideas I had in mind. There was one in particular from which I now derive a great deal of satisfaction, because it is being used on such a universal scale. It is the metal lace latch seen on so many shoes. It came into being as an aid to my own quick dressing.
About this time, I invented an instrument called the Anemometer, for recording the direction of the wind; also a registering step for street cars, recording the number of passengers carried; and a street indicator geared from the axle showing each street in succession, from an illuminated box, as the car passed. These I placed in successful operation. This ended my efforts to improve the railroad business.

Shortly thereafter, I invented and patented the “Recording Lumber Measure”, a machine which automatically measured and recorded four different kinds of lumber at the same time. This device set me thinking about computing machines and this point really marks the birth of the Monroe.
In the office of a life insurance company at St. Louis, I had seen the Thomas type of calculating machine, devised by C. X. Thomas of Colmar, France, about 1820. I contrived the plan of substituting one cylinder for the nine cylinders in that machine, making a working model, which is now in the Patent Office at Washington.
It was on this model that William Seward Burroughs, later of Burroughs Adding Machine fame, did some work for me in a small general machine shop, which he, with his father, had in St Louis.
Not until about 1880 did Mr. Burroughs start work on his own adding machine with a keyboard set-up. The meteoric success of the business that bears the Burroughs name is history.
In October 1872, I married Mary K. Denniston of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, who was visiting relatives in St. Louis. The year after, we moved to Philadelphia where I rented a small shop and started to make ten of the calculating machines. While thus engaged, I saw the expediency of a small machine to supplement the larger one, and designed an adding machine which I named the “Arithmometer”, and this patent, dated July 28, 1874, was the first one of the kind granted me by the United States Patent Office. It was also one of the first adding machines sold in the United States.
I placed both machines on exhibition at the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, and was awarded the John Scott Medal for the most meritorious invention of the year. The only other inventor that year receiving a similar honor from the Institute was George Westinghouse for his air-brake. The Government granted me patent rights in 1875.
As soon as one of the calculating machines was finished, I took it to the office of the Pennsylvania Railroad and was referred to Mr. George M. Taylor, Auditor of Freight Receipts. As soon as he saw the machine, he exclaimed, ‘You are a year too late. If I could have had a machine like that a year ago, it would have been invaluable. I have had a series of tables prepared, giving rates on quantities from 1 to 2,000 pounds, carried from 1 to 550 miles of the road, making over a million computations. Seven different clerks have checked each sheet and I have just had them lithographed for distribution to the agents. However, I would like to see your machine tested.’
He asked a clerk to bring in one of the sheets. Then he began calling off the items while I multiplied them on the machine. After about fifty items he cried, ‘Hold on, that is wrong.’ I looked at the sheet and there surely was a discrepancy. To make certain, I erased it and did it over. I said, ‘The error is in the sheet, sir’. ‘What, you don’t mean to say that the table is wrong?’ ‘Prove it for yourself, sir,’ said I. Had a bomb been exploded in the office, the consternation could not have been greater.
The clerks were hastily called in and each one had to figure it himself before he would believe those tables could be wrong. ‘Well,’ said Mr. Taylor, ‘I will buy your machine if you will instruct one of my clerks how to operate it, and then I want all of these tables gone over and proven correct.’
I taught one of them how to use it and he began the work of checking, which took some time, but three months later he confessed to me under the pledge of absolute secrecy that he had found 135 errors in the tables, seven on one sheet. The lapse of time is my only excuse for breaking that pledge.
I still have a copy of Mr. Taylor’s letter written to me from Philadelphia on August 8, 1874.

F.S. Baldwin, Esq.
Dear Sir:
I have used for the last four months one of your large machines daily in this department and have no hesitation in saying it performs its work rapidly and reliably, and for the purpose used does the work of at least three men with a certainty of correctness and greater rapidity. For Railroad Companies, calculating mileages and tonnages, it is, I consider, invaluable.
Yours respectfully,
G.M. Taylor,
P.R.R.Co.

Of course I was elated at this proof of the utility of the machine and plunged into the business with renewed vigor, but I soon found that I had undertaken too heavy a task. So I made a contract with the Reliance Machine Works of Philadelphia to manufacture the machines, while I took charge of the Sales Department. I met with considerable success in selling the adding machines, but found the town too slow to accept the calculators, so I concluded to try New York. There I sold several calculators to the leading life insurance companies and one to the State Department in Albany.
Although pleased with my success in New York, I was anxious to secure the endorsement of the Government, so I resolved to strike at the fountainhead at Washington.
I went to the office of the Secretary of the Treasury. After waiting until the crowd was thinned out, I walked boldly into his office and placing the machine on his desk, said: ‘Mr. Secretary, I wish to call you attention to a machine which I believe will prove very useful to the Government.’ I proceeded to demonstrate it. Secretary Benjamin Bristow looked at me quizzically for a moment and then pushed a button on his desk. An elderly gentleman appeared, whom I found afterwards to fill the position of Actuary of the Department. ‘Mr. Elliott, said the Secretary, this young man has a very interesting machine here which I wish you to examine thoroughly and send me a report upon.’ Mr. Elliott bowed and, beckoning me to follow, led me to his own office, which I frequently visited afterward. I found him not only a fine mathematician, but a most agreeable companion and very popular in the Departments, and it was through his assistance that I was able to place the remaining calculators with the Government.
One afternoon he took me out to the National Observatory and introduced me to the celebrated scientist, Professor Simon Newcomb, saying: I want to present Mr. Baldwin, who writes and recites Pi to 128 places. Professor Newcomb was very much interested in the calculator and complimented me highly.
All this time I was holding demonstrations in the evening at the hotel or in private houses with the machine, as most people had never heard of such a thing as ‘metal brains,’ and some, thinking I had manipulated certain figures, would insist on giving me problems of their own, often in their haste making a mistake and having to retire in confusion.
One evening a young man introduced himself as the Private Secretary of General Benjamin F. Butler and insisted that I should show it to the General as he was deeply interested in mechanics. I spent two hours with the General going over the machine. When I had finished, he turned to me and said: Well, young man, you have made a most remarkable machine, but I tell you, you are thirty years in advance of the Age. Rather cold comfort that, but my experience since has convinced me that he was about right.
Although I had been successful in placing the ten calculating machines, they had been made principally by hand, affording no profits. As the Reliance Machine Works did not have the facilities for quantity production, and the failure of Jay Cooke, with the ensuing panic, caused such a stagnation in business, I gave up the fight and returned to St. Louis in 1876, where, after a while, I started to work up gradually.
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 Triumpator, manufactured in Germany.
In 1900, I patented the Baldwin Computing Engine, a machine by which multiplication or division was performed by one stroke for each digit.
In 1902, I brought out the Baldwin Calculator. I went back to first principles in this machine, employing the reverse action in dividing and subtracting, the carrying motion being provided on a separate shaft, reducing the diameter of the main cylinder to one half the size of that of the 1875 machine. Some of these machines are still in use, after more than a quarter century of service. In 1905, I designed a listing machine with only ten keys and a spacer.
In 1908, I was awarded a patent on the Baldwin Recording Calculator, which combined the listing machine with the calculator. This machine, with the keyboard and oscillating bars, formed the germ of the present Monroe.

In 1911, I became acquainted with Mr. Jay R. Monroe, then associated with the Western Electric Company in New York City. Only a few years prior he had been graduated from law at Michigan. He was a young man then, and is still young in years, but mature in ideas and judgment.
Mr. Monroe had always been of a mechanical turn of mind, but fortunately his work, following his graduation, was along clerical and commercial lines. This brought him in close touch with calculating machines and the various uses to which they were being applied, and he began to study them for their weaknesses, endeavoring to devise ways in which they could be improved.
It was about this time that he told me that the day had arrived when business was demanding a more efficient machine than had then appeared on the market—one that anyone could operate after one explanation; one that was portable; one that was simple in construction; one that furnished perfect visibility with a proof of accuracy; one with a keyboard set-up; one that would not only add, but multiply, divide and subtract as easily as it could add.
I showed him my machine. At once he saw it possibilities. We joined hands and set about designing the machine to make it as nearly perfect as possible in its adaptation to the needs of modern business.
The result of that work and our later association is the Monroe High Speed Adding-Calculator which is filling no small part in faithful, economic service in the realm of business.

As one can see from the interview, Frank Baldwin cannot be qualified as The Most Humble Man In The World 🙂 The story of Odhner’s plagiarism is also quite questionable.

Frank Baldwin died on 8 April 1925, in a private hospital in Morristown, New Jersey, following an operation, within two days of reaching his 87^th birthday. Until the last day of his life, his mind was clear and keen, and his interest in his family and the things about him was just as pronounced as ever.

Edmund Dana Barbour (1841-1925), a businessman, philanthropist, and genealogist from Boston, Massachusetts, is a remarkable figure in the world of mechanical calculators. In 1872, he took out two very interesting US patents for calculating devices (U.S. patents №130404 and №133188), describing a machine, which seems to be the first representative of so-called direct-multiplication devices. In the same 1872 Barbour received also a patent in Great Britain (GR187202437), and in France (Brevet N°96190).

In his second patent, Barbour not only improved and simplified his first machine, but also provided a simple printing mechanism. Moreover, in 1875 he patented a new machine (U.S. patent №168080), not a direct-multiplication one, but with a more complex printing device. Barbour seems to be one of the first people (after Johann Müller and Charles Babbage), who designed a printing mechanism for his mechanical calculator.

There is no doubt, that Barbour’s machines were simply too advanced for the time (beginning of the 1870s), so they had not been commercialized and remained only on paper. Nevertheless, they deserve our attention because they included some extremely interesting technical solutions and innovations and proved the great constructor imagination of the inventor.

Almost all 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-multiplication calculating machines, the operator had only to perform n operations when the multiplier was an n digit number.

Let’s start our review with an examination of the first direct-multiplication device of Barbour, and obviously the first of its kind in the world, using the first patent drawing (see the image below).

The accumulator mechanism of the machine, including the numeral wheels and their devices for transferring the tens, is mounted in a sliding carriage at the top of the machine (see Fig. 1 of the patent drawing), which may be operated by the hand-knob. Extending through the bottom of the carriage are a series of pinions, one for each ordinal numeral wheel, and connected thereto by a ratchet and pawl action. The pinions are each so arranged as to be operative with a gear rack beneath the carriage when the carriage is slid back and forth.

Thus the wheels received action from one direction of the motion of the carriage and remain idle during the movement in the other direction. The degree of motion so received would, of course, depend upon the number of teeth in the racks below encountered by the pinions.

The gear racks employed by Barbour were numerous, one being provided for each multiple of the nine digits, arranged in groups constituting nine sets mounted on the drums marked B (see Fig. 4). Each of these sets contains nine mutilated gear racks, the arrangement of the teeth of which serve as the multiples of the digit they represent.

The teeth of the racks representing the multiples of the digits were arranged in groups of units and tens. For instance: 4×6=24, the rack representing the multiple of 4×6 would have two gear teeth in the tens place and four gear teeth in the units place, and likewise for the eighty other combinations.

Adding the multiples of the digits by overlapping the orders was accomplished by a very simple means, the arrangement of the racks being such that as the carriage was moved from left to right the numeral wheel pinions would move over the units rack teeth of a multiplying rack of one order and the tens rack teeth of a multiplying rack in the next lower order.

By close examination the reader will note from the drawings that the lower one of the sets of multiplying gear racks shown on the drum B, to the left in Fig. 4, is the series of one times the nine digits, the next set or series of racks above are the multiplying racks for the multiples of two, the lowest rack in that series having but two teeth, the next higher rack four teeth, the next rack six and the next eight.

So far no multiple of two has amounted to more than a units ordinal place, therefore these racks operate on a lower-order numeral wheel, and are all placed to the right of the center on the drum B, but the next rack above for adding the multiple of two times five requires that one shall be added to a higher order, and is therefore placed on the left side of the center of the drum.

Thus it will be noted that by reading the number of teeth on the right of each rack as units and those on the left as tens, that running anti-clockwise around the drum, each series of multiplying racks show multiples of the digits from one to four, it being obvious that the racks for adding the multiples of the higher digits are on the opposite side of the drums.

From the layout of the racks it is also obvious that the starting or normal position of the carriage would be with the numeral wheel pinions of each order in the center of each drum, so that as the carriage is moved to the right, the units wheel will receive movement from the units teeth of the rack on the units drum, while the tens wheel will receive movement from the units teeth of the tens drum and the tens teeth of the units drum, and so on with the higher wheels, as each numeral wheel pinion except the units passes from the center of one drum to the center of the next lower and engages such teeth as may be presented.

Each of the drums B is independently mounted on the pivot shaft C, and is provided with the hand-operating setting-racks I and E, co-acting with the gears R and D, to help in bringing the proper racks into engage-able positions with the pinions of the accumulator numeral or total wheels.

The hand-knob G, Fig. 4, and the gears f, fast to a common shaft, furnish a means for operating the whole series of drums when the right multiple series of racks of each drum have been brought into position.

As an example of the operation of the Barbour calculator, let us assume that 7894 is to be multiplied by 348. The first drum to the right would be moved by its setting racks until the series of multiplying racks for adding the multiples of four are presented, the next higher drum to the left would be set until the series of multiplying racks for adding the multiples of nine were presented, the next higher drum would be set for the multiples of eight, and the next higher drum, or the fourth to the left, would be set for the multiples of seven. Then the hand-knob G, first turned to register zero, may be shoved to the right, engaging the pinions f with the gears D, and by turning the knob to register (8), the first figure in the multiplier, the racks are then set ready to move the numeral wheels to register as follows: The drum to the right or the units drum has presented the multiplying rack for adding the multiple of 8×4, thus it will present three teeth for the tens wheel and two teeth for the units wheel. The tens drum presenting the rack for adding the multiple of 8×9 will present seven teeth for the hundreds wheel and two for the tens wheel. The hundreds drum presenting the rack for adding the multiple of 8×8 will present six teeth for the thousands wheel and four for the hundreds wheel.

The rack of the thousands drum representing the multiple of 8×7 will present five teeth for the tens of thousands wheel and six for the thousands wheel. Thus by sliding the carriage to the right one space, the numeral wheel pinions will engage first the units teeth on one drum, then the tens teeth on the next lower drum and cause the wheels to register 63152. The operator, by turning the knob G to register (4), the next figure of the multiplier, turns the drum so that a series of multiplying racks representing multiples of 4 times each figure in the multiplicand are presented, so that by sliding the carriage another space to the right, the multiple of 4×7894 will be added to the numeral wheels. The operator then turns the knob to register three and moves the carriage one more space to the right, adding the multiple of 3×7894 to the wheels in the next higher ordinal series, resulting in the answer of 2747112.

The U.S. Patent Office model (up to 1880, the Patent Office required inventors to submit a model with their patent application) of the first calculating machine of Edmund Barbour’s is still preserved in the National Museum of American History (see the nearby photo).

The patent model is a greatly simplified version of the patented machine, with overall measurements: 14 cm x 41 cm x 13 cm. It consists of eight wooden cylinders that rotate on a crosswise shaft inside a wooden box. Each cylinder has around its edge 90 rows of cog-teeth (they have not actually been constructed, only shown as pen marks on a slip of paper that extends around the first cylinder). Each set of nine cog-teeth represents the multiples of a digit (zero multiples correspond to blank spaces).

The machine is set to a given multiplier by rotating all the cylinders with a knob at one end of the machine (this knob is also missing). The first cylinder has on its left side a wooden spur gear with 90 teeth. The other cylinders would have such gears, but they are uncut. Pulling out a wooden toothed rack below the gear advances it one-ninetieth of a revolution for each unit on the rack. Hence the operator can set a multiplicand.

A movable carriage of brass on the top of the machine is supposed to be linked to the cylinders, so that when the carriage is pulled one unit to the right, the recording wheels advance in proportion to the figure represented on the edge of the cylinders (in the model, the cylinders are not linked to the sliding carriage).

Now let’s examine the second patent (see the lower drawing) for an improved and simplified variant of the first machine with a printing mechanism.

The printing device for recording calculations was of the most simple nature, allowing only for the printing of totals and sub-totals. Its manipulation consisted of placing a piece of paper under a hinged platen and depressing the platen by hand in the same manner that a timestamp is used. The ink had to be daubed on the type by a hand operation to make legible the impressions of the type.

Fig. 1 represents the base of the machine, while Fig. 4 shows a carriage which, when in place, is superimposed above the base as illustrated in Figs. 3 and 5.

The operation of the machine is performed by first pulling out the slides B (shown in Fig. 1), which set the digital degrees of actuation of each order; and, second, by operating the hand-lever K, from its normal position at 1, if it is desired to add, or to any of the other numbers in accordance to the value of the multiplier if multiplication is desired.

The movement of the handle K, from one figure to the other, gives a reciprocation to the carriage, so that for each figure a reciprocation will take place.

Each of slides B, has a series of nine gear racks; each rack has a number of teeth ranging progressively from 1 tooth for the first gear rack to 9 teeth for the last rack, thus the pulling out of the slides B will present one of the gear racks in line to act upon the accumulator mechanism of the carriage as the carriage is moved back and forth over it.

The accumulator mechanism consists of the register wheels M1 and M2 and the type wheels M3 and M4, mounted on a common arbor and a carry transfer device between the wheels of each order.

Operating between the accumulator wheels and the racks of plate B are a pair of gears, one in the form of a lantern wheel loosely mounted on the accumulator wheel shaft but connected thereto by a ratchet wheel and pawl connection; the other, a small pinion meshing with the lantern wheel on a separate axis, protrudes below the carriage into the path of the racks.

Thus as the carriage is moved by the reciprocating device connected with the hand-lever K, the pinions of the accumulator will engage whatever racks have been set and the numeral wheels and type wheels will be operated to give the result.

The numeral and type wheels have two sets of figures, one of which is used for addition and multiplication, while the other set runs in the opposite direction for negative computation or subtraction and division.

A plate arranged with sight apertures covers the numeral or register wheels, while the type wheels are left uncovered to allow a hinged platen F, mounted on the top of the carriage (see Fig. 3), to be swung over on top of them and depressed.

Attached to the platen F, are a series of spring clips d, under which strips of paper may be slipped (as shown by D, in Fig. 4), and which serves to hold the paper while an impression is taken.

It seems Barbour submitted to the U.S. Patent Office only a part of his second calculating machine’s model, which is still preserved in the National Museum of American History (see the nearby photo).

The device (overall measurements: 2.5 cm x 41 cm x 9.1 cm) has a rectangular wooden base with nine grooves in it. The rightmost groove contains a rectangular brass plate with nine rows of teeth in it. The first row has one tooth, the second, two, and so forth. This plate has a metal handle, marked with digits from 1 to 9, that can be pulled forward to enter a digit.

To the right of the grooved wooden base and its metal plate is another brass plate on which is mounted a mechanism for controlling a slide that is supposed to move over the rectangular plate, carrying out desired arithmetic operations. In this machine, multiplication is carried out by repeated motion of the slide, rather than in a single motion as in Barbour’s first machine.

The third patent of Barbour, applied for in 1873 and granted in 1875, described not a direct-multiplication machine, but a calculating machine with a more complex printing device (see the nearby patent drawing).

The U.S. Patent Office model of the third calculating machine of Edmund Barbour is still preserved in the National Museum of American History (see the photo below).

It is a small brass machine with an overall measurement: 5.5 cm x 19 cm x 12.2 cm, which has a rectangular base on which is mounted crosswise a rotating cylinder. The cylinder has nine crosswise grooves that fill somewhat less than a quarter of the surface. Metal bands separate the grooves into columns, and each column has a set of nine sliding markers that fit in the grooves. Sliding these markers sets a number. There also is an array of pins around the cylinder, which is used in carrying. There are gears on both sides of the cylinder.

The registering mechanism has an open frame that holds three rods. One rod holds four type wheels, and the other two rods hold four gears each. Each type wheel has numbers from 0 to 9.

Biography of Edmund Dana Barbour

Edmund Dana Barbour, the youngest of six children of Oliver Barbour (1796–1866), and Mary Hutchinson (1800–1857), was born on 11 August 1841, at Henchman Lane, in the North End of Boston.

Edmund’s father, Oliver H. Barbour (12 August 1796–4 December 1866), a tailor by occupation, was an heir (7th generation) of the glorious family of Capt. George Barbour (born 28 Dec. 1613 in Fessingfield, England, died 13 April 1685 in Medfield, New England) the Puritan leader of Dedham and Medfield, who came to America in 1635, was a selectman and town clerk, Deputy to the General Court, and chief military officer of his district.

On 25 December 1821, Oliver Barbour married in Boston Mary Hutchinson (25 December 1800–1 September 1857), daughter of Henry Hutchinson (1763–1833), sailmaker in Boston, and Susannah (Leach) Hutchinson (1765–1807). The family had six children—Mary Elisabeth, Susannah Leach, Henry, Mary, Mary Angeline, and Edmund.

Edmund Barbour was educated in the public schools of Boston, and while a youth came under notice and entered the employ of the distinguished Boston railroad magnate and merchant, John Murray Forbes (1813-1898), see the nearby image. In 1862, during the Civil War, Forbes, who was a very active and influential abolitionist, recommended young Barbour to be used as a wartime messenger as “a young man who got things done”. Through the influence of John Forbes, Barbour secured in 1863 a position in the company of Russel & Co. (Robert Bennet Forbes (1804–1889), the brother of John Forbes, was the head of Russell & Co.)

Russel & Co. was an eminent and prosperous Asiatic commercial house, the largest American trading house in China. Just as his patron John Forbes, who began his career spending 7 years in China, Edmund Barbour at once went to China, spending most of the next 8 years there, and his energy and abilities resulted in his admission as a partner in the firm in 1869. During his years in Asia, he traveled to India, and had numerous exciting and dangerous experiences, among them attacks by pirates and religious fanatics, escapes from the plague, and perils from rebellions and local uprisings (the lower photo pictures the headquarters building of Russel & Co. in Canton, where Barbour served).

Barbour returned to Boston in 1871 and soon became connected with the large financial operations and railroad business of Forbes. In the early 1870s, he devised and patented his remarkable calculating machines. Barbour continued with his successful acquisition of money (e.g. he invested successfully in the Bell Telephone Company) until about 1895, having accumulated a fortune of over a million dollars. During the remaining 30 years of his life, he continued with shrewd investing, and his estate was nearly trebled before his death.

Barbour had a large estate in Sharon, Mass., with a dwelling house of Chinese design and a large and valuable collection of Chinese works of art, which unfortunately were burned in 1882. Barbour loved to travel and he made three trips around the world and a score of visits to Europe.

On retiring from active business in 1895 Barbour made extensive research on the genealogy of Barbour and Hutchinson families and wrote a huge manuscript and many genealogical charts. He entered also the New England Historic Genealogical Society.

Barbour’s greatest pleasure in later years came in helping those in need. Many young men and women are indebted to him for financial help in securing their education. He financed also a great number of charitable philanthropies, promoted temperance legislation, and helped discharged prisoners. He devised almost the whole of his huge property (on a rough estimate of three million dollars, a huge sum for the time) to several Boston Universities like Harvard College, MIT, and Radcliffe (Barbour’s daughter Mary Ella studied in Radcliffe 1894-1897).

Edmund Barbour married in Boston, on 23 August 1867, to Mary Therese Ross (born in Lyme, New Hampshire, on 11 January 1841, died in Boston on 11 December 1897), daughter of Samuel Elkins and Ruth (Hews) Ross. The family had four children, but unfortunately only one of them survived childhood—Mary Ella (1870-1954). The only son, Edmund Forbes (1868-1869), and two other daughters Ethel (1881-1884), and Edith (1872-1874) died young.

Edmund Dana Barbour was an extremely positive, kind-hearted, and magnetic man with a handsome, vigorous physique and remarkably strong mental powers. However, since 1920 he rapidly developed serious heart weakness, resulting in his death at his home in Boston, 344 Beacon Street (see the house of Barbour on the nearby images), on 5 March 1925.

Dr. John Ballou Newbrough (1828-1891), a 33rd degree Mason, clairvoyant, vegetarian, and an avid student of the world’s religions, called by some people America’s Greatest Prophet, was an inventive man and a holder of numerous US patents, between them three patents for calculation devices. The first patent he took out in 1858 (US patent №21621), second in 1859 (№24481), and third in 1860 (№27418).

First two calculators of Ballou are simple devices, but the third (see US patent №27418) is a more elaborate contrivance, and the patent model survived to the present, kept in the National Museum of American History, Washington (see the lower image), so it deserves our attention. Interestingly, this calculator is quite similar to the adding device of Jabez Burns, patented only a month before.

The third calculator of John Ballou was a small metal and wood adding machine, with measurements: 10 cm x 11.5 cm x 13.9 cm.

The lever-set adding device has a metal casing, painted black, and a wooden bottom. The curved front of the machine has slots for six movable wheels, the right-hand wheel operated for units, the next for tens, etc. The part of the case to the right of each ring is marked with the digits from 0 at the bottom of the curve to 9 at the top. A crosswise shaft in the machine carries a series of six-toothed metal rings that fit between the openings in the case and serve as finger wheels, ratchets, and registers. The digits are inscribed around their edges of the rings, next to the teeth. One digit of each wheel is visible at the top of the machine, showing the result when numbers are entered by turning rings forward.

A tens carry mechanism is also provided—the left side of each ring has a pin (a shifter) every ten places, which drives the adjacent wheel when carrying is required.

Biography of John Ballou Newbrough

John Ballou Newbrough was humbly born on 5 June 1828, in a log cabin in the farm of his family a couple of miles north of Mohicanville, Ashland, Ohio, to William Newbrough (1791-1878), and Elizabeth Newbrough, nee Polsley (1795-1875).

William Newbrough was a British American (Newbrough family comes from Aberdeenshire, Scotland), born in Maryland. Elizabeth Polsley was a Swiss American (Baltzli->Balsley->Polsley family comes from Langnau, canton Bern, Switzerland), born in Morgantown, West Virginia, who was attracted to spiritualism. Newbroughs lived off the land, raising their own food, but William Newbrough was an educated man, who had attended the famous William and Mary College in Virginia and used to work as the local schoolmaster in Mohicanville.

John’s middle name was after the American Universalist clergyman and theological writer, Hosea Ballou (1771–1852). John Ballou was the fourth child in the family, after the boys Jacob Cyrus (1819-1822), Solomon Daniel (1819-1896), and Eugenius Polsley (1824-1888), and he had two younger brothers—Josephus Justice (1829-1911) and Franklin Cicero (1835-1913), and a sister—Paulina Olive (1832-1866).

John Ballou was clairvoyant from childhood, although his father was a stern man, flogging his son when the latter began to receive spirit messages. John was educated in the local schoolhouse, and at only 16 he taught school during the winter of his last year at home. In 1844 he went to Cleveland Medical College to study both medicine and dentistry, where his schooling was paid for by his mother selling wool and eggs and John working as a dental assistant to the famous dentist Dr. Franklin S. Slosson, helping to make dental plates and taking impressions for false teeth.

In 1849 John Ballou graduated from Cincinnati Dental College, and then worked for a short time under the supervision of his uncle, who was the head physician in an “insane asylum”.

In 1849 John Ballou and his Scotsman partner, John Turnbull, moved to California (in 1848 California Gold Rush began). They were successful, accumulating a small fortune, and afterward, in 1851, they mined gold in Australian gold fields of Ballarat also, where Newbrough struck a claim worth $25000.

After making his fortune and circling the globe, Newbrough returned to the US in 1855. He shared part of his good fortune with his family back in Ohio, where his parents and younger siblings still lived. Then he began to practice as a physician in Cincinnati, but soon switched to dentistry and moved to Dayton and St. Louis.

On 24 February 1860, John Ballou married Rachel Turnbull (1837-1918), a sister of his gold field partner John Turnbull, in the Presbyterian Church at Jedburgh, Scotland. The Newbroughs settled initially in Philadelphia, where John practiced dentistry until 1862, then moved to New York City for more than twenty years. They had three children: the boys William (1860-1919), who became a civil engineer, and George (1862-1864), and the daughter Elizabeth (1865-1954), who became an artist.

John Newbrough was a writer and poet. His first novel was a 600-page book about his experiences in the California Gold Rush: The Lady of the West, or the Gold Seekers, printed in Cincinnati, in 1855, was a love story during the adventure. Later he published several other books, between them one, which made him famous: Oahspe: A New Bible. It was published in 1882, purporting to contain new revelations from …the Embassadors of the angel hosts of heaven prepared and revealed unto man in the name of Jehovih…. Newbrough reported it to have been written by automatic writing (he owned a Sholes typewriter), making it one of a number of 19th-century spiritualist works attributed to that practice.

John Ballou fathered a daughter, Jone “Justine” Ballou (born on 1 January 1884, died 1973), to his dental assistant Frances Vandewater Sweet (1860-1922, see the nearby portrait). In April 1884, his wife Rachel ordered him to leave their house in New York City (they divorced in 1886 and Newbrought married Frances Vandewater). Newbrough and Vandewater moved to a farm at Pearl River, New York, which by March 1884 they named “Camp Hored”, the staging place for founding Shalam Colony, as outlined in Oahspe.

Later in 1884, Newbrough and Andrew Moore Howland (1834-1917), a member of a distinguished New England family and heir to a vast whaling fortune, set out to find an appropriate site for the colony, and selected 1490 acres in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Soon, 22 Faithists arrived and settled a colony, to care for and raise foundlings and orphan children to better world as adults. The colony and Newbrough himself had a lot of problems, but managed to survive somehow until 1891, when ultimate disaster befell the colony. An outbreak of influenza devastated the area, and Newbrough himself was struck down, dying on 22 April 1891. For almost a decade, Frances Newbrough and Andrew Howland (Frances married to Howland in 1893) attempted to revive the faded dream, struggling to keep the colony going. By 1900, Shalam was destitute. The school closed, children rebelled and colonists squabbled.

John Ballou Newbrough was an inventive man and a holder of numerous US patents, between them three patents for calculators, and also for the manufacturing of rubber (US patent 73916, for this patent he ran into trouble with the Goodyear Rubber Co., because he developed a much cheaper compound to set teeth in dental plates than the one produced by Goodyear, which dominated the market), artificial teeth (US85927), furnace pot (US115677), car for railway (US121539), ventilator (US142140), exercising apparatus (US169467), and others.

At the end of the 1850s Jabez Burns (1826-1888), a bookkeeper and peddler from New York desperately needed a tool to facilitate the lengthy calculations, performed on daily basis. That’s why he invented a simple adding device, for which on 24 August 1858, he took out the US patent №21243 for a machine for adding numbers or addometer.

The adding machine of Jabez Burns obviously never went into production, and only the patent model survived to the present time, property of the Smithsonian National Museum (see the image below).

The described in the patent application adding machine of Jabez Burns is a small 4/5 positional device (4 digits in input, and 5 digits in output mechanism), but the inventor mentioned that the system of register wheels and gearing may be continued indefinitely.

The patent model was made of wood, tin, brass, and paper, and has measurements: 16 cm x 38.7 cm x 12.2 cm.

Let’s examine briefly the adding device of Jabez Burns, using the patent drawing (see the nearby image).

The addometer is a simple lever-set adding machine with wooden sides and metal covers for the back and the lower front (see the lower photo). The four large-toothed wheels (visible on the front side), are used for setting numbers, with five registering wheels in front and below these. Between each of the large wheels, there is an inscribed strip of metal, with the digits from 0 to 9 indicated along the edges of these strips. Each of the four right registering wheels, divided into ten parts, is attached to a spur wheel with ten teeth that meshes with a large toothed wheel.

Placing a finger in one of the teeth of a large wheel and rotating it forward advances the registering wheel proportionally. The number entered is visible in a row of windows at the front of the model. The four registering wheels to the left have on their left side a ring of ten equidistant pins that are used in carrying.

The addometer of Burns is a device with limited practical use but can be seen as a predecessor of later adding devices and cash resisters like these of Joseph Alexander and Melvin Lovell.

Biography of Jabez Burns

Jabez Burns was born in London on 12 February 1826, as the second child in the family of William Gibson Burns (6 Feb. 1801-9 Dec. 1879), and Elizabeth Horrock (or Herricks) (1786-1861). Jabez had two sisters—Elizabeth (1816-1885), and Mary (McPherson) (1822-1910). Jabez was named after his uncle—Jabez Burns (1805–1876), who became a famous English nonconformist divine and Christian philosophical writer.

William Gibson Burns was the son of the basket maker and vendor of worm medicine Joseph Burns and his devout Wesleyan wife Mary. He was fairly well educated for that time and place and an ardent Chartist, who worked as a basket maker, just like his father. It appears that a similar education was most likely given to young Jabez because during his first winter in the USA he taught in a country school.

In 1829 the family moved from London to Dundee, Scotland. Nothing is known about Jabez until the summer of 1844, when he arrived in New York with his mother, to seek his fortune.

The first winter in America found youthful Jabez teaching a country school at Summit, New Jersey. Then in 1845, he began in New York as a teamster for Henry Blair, a prosperous coffee merchant. Blair introduced Jabez to the church and the attending Scots community where Burns met Agnes Brown (1824-1904), a young Scots girl, a daughter of a Paisley (Scotland) weaver. The couple married in 1847 and in 1849 was born their first child, William. The family will have seven sons, William Gibson (1849-1886), James (1850-1857), Jabez (1852-1908), Joseph (1854-1898), Robert (1857-1929), Abraham Lincoln (1866-1941), George Washington (1868-1877), and one daughter, Agnes (1858-1928).

Jabez had continued regularly in the employ of coffee and spice firms, selling their products door-to-door, and at one time he was a bookkeeper and peddler for Thomas Reid’s Globe Mills. It seems during this period in the middle 1850s he devised his calculating device, in order to facilitate lengthy calculations. Jabez advanced slowly because he lacked real trading talent; but he was learning all about the handling of goods, from purchase to final delivery; and when he quit bookkeeping for Globe Mills, and began to build his patented coffee roaster, he could advise clients reliably about every factory detail.

Thus in the 1850s and 1860s, Jabez rose from a cart-man to a peddler, bookkeeper, and gifted inventor, to founding a company that has been referred to as the “unique coffee-machinery workshop, the greatest of its kind in the United States.” In 1864, Jabez Burns founded his trademark company, Jabez Burns & Sons, and began to manufacture the improved coffee roaster which he invented. The company became quite successful and existed up to 1964 when was bought out by a much larger firm, but (amazingly) the brand is still used in our time (see: jabezburns.com).

Although the Burns family seemed to be hard workers, they exhibited a strong sense of family and apparently enjoyed playing music together (see the nearby photo).

Besides the above-mentioned patent for an adding machine from 1858, Jabez Burns was a holder of many other patents, mainly for coffee equipment. e.g. US Patent Nrs. 44704, 115431, 241295, 241296, 147370, and others, but also for a water-closets (№149195 and №156978), windows shade fixture (№94866), etc. All his life he was reportedly always working on some kind of invention.

Jabez Burns’ life was a true rags-to-riches story. He died on 16 September 1888, in New York.