Real invention is a process of repeated, crushing failure that leads, very rarely, to success. If you want to succeed faster, there’s nothing for it but to fail faster and better.
Cory Doctorow
On 18th December 1866, John H. Chidester of Cleveland, Ohio, patented a simple adding device (see US Letters Patent No. 60475), that was quite similar to the earlier machines of his compatriots Jabez Burns and John Ballou.
The Computing Machine of Chidester (see the nearby patent drawing) obviously never went into production, and even the patent model is not preserved to the present time (up to 1880, the US Patent Office required inventors to submit a model with their patent application).
The device has a brass cylindrical case, sections of which are cut out in the direction of its circumference, leaving openings. It has nine number wheels, on one side of which is cut a square recess or groove, and on its periphery thirty square notches, of equal size and of equal distance from each other. These wheels are put on a common shaft and related with springs to eight disks, made to fit closely into the recess or groove of the wheels, but not so closely that they will not easily turn. The wheels are turned by pointed pins, inserted into the notches between the figures, and as the wheels turn, the springs transfer the motion to the disks.
Little is known about the inventor of this calculating machine. John Hinkley Chidester was born in 1821 somewhere in Pennsylvania. He was the son of Lydia Hinkley Chidester (1794-1872) from New York and Silas Chidester from New Jersey. John had an elder sister, Sarah Hall Chidester-Harrington (1820-1904). John Hinkley Chidester died on 23 July 1877 (aged 56) in Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and was buried in the local Woodland Cemetery.