Computer Timeline – Page 23 – Yet another site for bright people, crafted by Georgi Dalakov

29 Mar 1887

Brainard Smith

In May and June 1886, Brainard Fowler Smith, a merchant from Sacramento, California, filed applications for two patents for keyboard-driven adding machines. The patents (US360118 and US363972) had been granted the next year (March and May 1887), as the second patent (US363972) was granted to Brainard Smith and Arthur Shattuck, and..Read More

31 May 1887

Arthur Shattuck

At the beginning of the 1880s, the young county and court clerk of Sonoma, California, Arthur Ewing Shattuck (1854-1932), driven by the need to facilitate the tedious office calculation work, designed his first calculating device, which he patented in 1882. Later Shattuck became a holder of a total of five..Read More

27 Sep 1887

Samuel Austin

On 16 September 1886, Samuel E. Austin, an American inventor from Fort Valley, Georgia, filed a patent application for a keyboard-operated adding machine. The patent (see US patent Nr. 370719) was granted on 27 September 1887. In the same 1887, Austin filed another patent application for a keyboard-operated adding machine,..Read More

08 Apr 1888

Otto Lilienthal

No doubt, there are many celebrities, mentioned on our humble site as inventors of calculating devices, let’s mention only Leonardo Da Vinci, Blaise Pascal, Gottfried Leibniz, and other not-so-illustrious men. It’s time now to tell the story of Karl Wilhelm Otto Lilienthal, the famous German pioneer of aviation, known as..Read More

12 Jun 1888

Albert Ludlum

In March 1887, Albert C. Ludlum (1867-1928), a young clerk in the Federal National Shoe & Leather Bank of the City of New York, applied for a patent for Adding and Writing Machine. The patent (No US384373), was granted in June 1888, then in 1891 the patent was reissued (pat...Read More

22 Sep 1888

Friedrich Reinitzer (LCD display)

Like many other technological gadgets, modern LCD technology is not an invention of a single man and has not happened in a year or two. In 1888 the Austrian botanist and chemist Friedrich Richard Kornelius Reinitzer (1857-1927) (see the left image), experimenting with cholesteryl benzoate extracted from carrots, discovered a..Read More

23 Oct 1888

Jacob Schnarrenberger

The mechanical engineer Jacob Henry Schnarrenberger of Springfield and Greenfield, Ohio, was a holder of quite a few (at least seven) US patents for calculating machines from 1888 until 1891 (most of the patents are assigned to Thomas Reynolds—Superintendent of the office of Sandusky and Cincinnati Railroad Co. in Springfield,..Read More

13 Nov 1888

Samuel Webb

Another American inventor with the common English name Webb, after Charles Webb, will be introduced in our humble site. Samuel J. Webb (1862-1909) was a businessman and prolific inventor from Minden, Louisiana. He invented more than 200 devices (for many of them he obtained patents), and the most popular of..Read More

16 Jan 1889

Philip Gottschalk

At the end of the 1880s, Philip Gottschalk (1842-1924), a German jew, born in England, who lived in Stockholm since the early 1870s, where he used to work as a mechanic, optician, and businessman, invented a calculating device. In 1889 the adding machine of Gottschalk has been patented in Sweden..Read More

19 Feb 1889

Johannes Vermehren

Little is known about the humble Danish bank clerk Johannes Vermehren (1858-1928), which is rather strange, because he was an active inventor for more than three decades (from the end of the 1880s until the early 1920s) and has several dozens of patents mainly for calculating devices not only in..Read More