Calvin Holman
The American Calvin James Holman (1827-1892) of Toledo, Ohio, was a businessman and prolific inventor, a holder of numerous (at least 12) US patents for various devices, like sawing machine, vehicle spring, hand truck, sad iron, vehicle wheel, folding umbrella, lock for telescoping bags, etc. One of his patents (US..Read More
Elmore Taylor
In May 1874, Elmore W. Taylor of Franklin, Johnson County, Indiana, applied for a patent for adding machines (US patent No. 155772), assigning one-half to his brother Richard T. Taylor. In the 1870s Elmore worked as an assistant cashier at First National Bank of Franklin and obviously devised this adding..Read More
George Phineas Gordon
George Phineas Gordon (1810-1878) was a famous American inventor (with more than 50 patents on his name), printer, and businessman, who developed the basic design of the most common printing press ever, the Gordon Letterpress. At the end of his life, in the middle 1870s, he was obviously so wealthy,..Read More
Willgodt Odhner
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..Read More
David Carroll
In February 1876 David Carroll, a self-taught inventor of Spring Creek, Pennsylvania, filed a patent application for an adding machine. The patent was granted on 2 May 1876 US Patent №176833 (see the nearby patent drawing). The machine of Carroll seems like well well-designed and workable device, but obviously never..Read More
Pafnuty Chebyshev
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...Read More
Kurt Dietzschold
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..Read More