Computer Timeline – Page 17 – Yet another site for bright people, crafted by Georgi Dalakov

29 Mar 1876

John Mears

On 29 March 1876 John Hall Mears (1827-1887), a 49 years old prolific inventor, who used to work as an agricultural machinery agent and commercial traveler, from Oshkosh, the county seat of Winnebago County, Wisconsin, USA, applied for a patent for a small and simple adding machine (arithmometer). The patent..Read More

02 May 1876

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

09 May 1876

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

14 Jun 1876

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

17 Oct 1876

Niels Larsen

In June 1876, Niels Larsen (1830-1891), a citizen of West Point, Cuming county, Nebraska, applied for a patent for calculating machine for taxes and interest. The patent was granted on 17 October 1876 (see US patent No. 183403). Besides the patent application nothing is known about the machine, so obviously..Read More

03 Nov 1876

Louis Chambon

The Parisian Casimir Louis Chambon was a holder of two French patents for table-based calculating devices—French patent Nr. 115319 from 3 Nov 1876 for Calculateur mécanique universel, and French patent Nr. 198553 from 28 May 1889 for Multiplicateur Diviseur, granted to his company—Société Chambon et Baye, représenté par Dumas. The..Read More

28 May 1877

Henry Pottin

In the middle 1870s, the French engineer Henry Pottin patented the first key-set crank-operated machine and made the first attempt to record the items in addition. The invention of Pottin implemented two of the prime principles of the first workable recording adders; one is the depressable key-set feature and the..Read More

24 Jul 1877

O. Berndt

On 24 July 1877, one O. Berndt of Nienburg, Germany, got a patentschrift (see German patent №81) for addirmaschine (adding machine) with an interesting construction. The keyboard adding machine of Berndt is one of the earliest developments of this type in Germany, and even though it never acquired any practical..Read More

07 Aug 1877

Marshall Cram

At the beginning of 1877 the young 23-year-old self-taught mechanic Marshall Cram, working as the first foreman of the Mankato Manufacturing Company machine shop in Mankato, Minnesota, stumbled upon a problem. One of his duties was to keep books at night, which needed calculations, so wanting to make his work..Read More

08 Aug 1877

Oskar Leuner

Friedrich Oskar Leuner (1845-1930), known as Oskar (or Oscar) Leuner, was a mechanical engineer from Dresden, who in 1870 established a workshop in his hometown. The workshop worked in the area of construction and manufacturing of scientific and technical instruments, mainly (since 1876) for Dresden Polytechnic College (Technischen Hochschule). Later..Read More