One trouble with all these contrivances was that, although they aided man to figure, they offered no means of making a record of the work. The man who used these machines had no way of checking his work to know if it was right unless he did it all over again.
The first machine to perform multiplication by means of successive additions was invented by Leibnitz in the year 1671 and completed in 1694. It employed the principle of the "stepped reckoner." This model was kept first at Gottingen and afterward at Hanover, but it did not act efficiently, as the gears were not cut with sufficient accuracy. This was long before the days of accurate machine tools.
The first satisfactory calculating machine of this nature was that of C. X. Thomas, which was brought out about 1820. It is usually called the Thomas de Colmar Arithmometer. This Thomas type of machine, which is commonly known as the beveled gear type, is still in use today in modern business.
The "Difference Engine."
In the year 1822 a very ambitious project was conceived by Charles Babbage. He commenced to construct an automatic calculating machine, which he called a "difference engine." The work was continued during the following twenty years, the English government contributing about $85,000 to defray its cost. Babbage himself spent a further sum of about $30,000. At the end of that time the construction of the engine, though nearly finished, was unfortunately abandoned, owing to some misunderstanding with the government. A portion of this engine is exhibited in South Kensington Museum, London, along with other examples of Babbage"s work. If the engine had been finished it would have contained seven columns of wheels, twenty wheels in each column, and also a contrivance for stereotyping the tables calculated by it. It was intended to perform the most extended calculations required in astronomy and navigation, and to stamp a record of its work into plates of copper or other material.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLES BABBAGE"S "ENGINE OF DIFFERENCES" WAS THE FIRST ADDING MACHINE INVENTED WHICH WAS DESIGNED TO PRINT A RECORD OF ITS WORK, BUT IT WAS NOT A SUCCESS
_Courtesy of the Burroughs Adding Machine Company._]
Babbage began to design his "a.n.a.lytical engine" in 1833 and he put together a small portion of it shortly before his death in 1871. This engine was to be capable of evaluating any algebraic formula. The formula it is desired to evaluate would be communicated to the engine by two sets of perforated cards similar to those used in the Jacquard loom.
These cards would cause the engine automatically to operate on the numerical data placed in it, in such a way as to produce the correct result. Notwithstanding its simple action, its structure is complicated by a large amount of adding mechanism. A complete set of adding wheels with carrying gear being required for the tabular number, and every order of difference except the highest order.
After Babbage, there was much experimenting done by inventors to produce a real adding and listing machine. Also inspired by Babbage"s work Scheutz of Stockholm made a "difference engine," which was exhibited in England in 1864, and subsequently acquired for Dudley Observatory, Albany, N. Y. Scheutz"s engine had mechanism for calculating with four orders of differences of sixteen figures each.
As far as we know the first patent in this country issued by the patent office for a calculating machine was to O. L. Castle of Alton, Illinois, in 1850. It was for a ten-key adding machine which did not print and only added in one column.
Work on Some of the Present-Day Models.
Frank S. Baldwin, a construction engineer, living in the United States, began to work on calculating machines in 1870. In 1874 he received a patent for a small hand adding machine. In 1875 a patent was granted him on a calculating machine. This machine was along entirely original lines. Mr. Baldwin did not even know of the existence of the Thomas machine at that time. The machine had a number of important advantages over the Thomas system. Scientists were very much interested in the invention at the time, and the John Scott medal for meritorious inventions was conferred upon Mr. Baldwin by the Franklin Inst.i.tute. The only other invention being honored in that year (1875) was the George Westinghouse air brake.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MODERN ADDING MACHINE
_Courtesy of the Monroe Calculating Machine Company._]
This calculating machine, however, seemed to be too much in advance of the times, and Mr. Baldwin was unable to interest capital in it. He was very successful in his business as construction engineer and continued to spend all his spare time and money in experimental work. He brought out a number of models at later dates with important improvements.
In the early eighties one of Mr. Baldwin"s 1875 models found its way to Europe into the hands of one Ohdner, a Swede. He took out patents in all European countries on a machine that did not vary in any important particular from Mr. Baldwin"s machine, and several large manufacturing companies in Europe took it up. It is now appearing under ten to fifteen different names in Europe, the most important being "Brunsviga" and Triumphator in Germany. There is no essential difference between the machines they are turning out today and Mr. Baldwin"s original machine.
More than 50,000 machines of this type have been sold throughout the world.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ONE OF THE FIRST SUCCESSFUL ADDING AND LISTING MACHINES
_Courtesy of the Burroughs Adding Machine Company._]
In 1883 a young man who started to work in a bank in Auburn, N. Y., discovered that nine-tenths of his work was mechanical addition. He also found that the human brain is but an imperfect tool, incapable of sustained effort without accident. His health gave way under the strain, and he quit the bank to begin work in a machine shop in St. Louis.
This was William S. Burroughs. He was of mechanical turn of mind, with an intense hobby for painful accuracy. By lamplight at home he worked out pencil outlines of a machine which would write figures and at the same time add them. It required the most painstaking work for him to make a machine to do what he had in mind. His early a.s.sociates say of Burroughs that no ordinary materials were good enough for his creation.
His drawings were on metal plates that would not stretch nor shrink by the fraction of a hair. He worked with hardened tools ground to a point, and when he struck a center or drew a line, he did it under a microscope.
In 1884 Burroughs took his plans to a St. Louis dry goods merchant, who thought so well of the idea that he raised $700 toward forming a company. The young man took up his work in the machine shop conducted by Joseph Boyer.
It was in January, 1885, that he applied for his patent, which was not issued until 1887.
His mechanism throughout operated on the pivotal principle. This means a minimum of friction, therefore the least wear on the machine and the least exertion on the part of the operator. The principle elements in the machine remain practically unchanged today, a fact which testifies to the excellence of the inventor"s work.
Experimenting on the machine swallowed a great deal of capital, and the stockholders of the company he had formed became impatient. Burroughs objected strenuously, for he did not wish to market the machine until he was convinced that it was perfect, but he finally agreed to manufacture fifty machines.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BOYER MACHINE SHOP, ST. LOUIS, WHERE ONE OF THE FIRST SUCCESSFUL ADDING AND LISTING MACHINES WAS BORN
_Courtesy of the Burroughs Adding Machine Company._]
In his public demonstrations, he could do wonders with the machine. The public was skeptical, however, and some averred that he was a "lightning calculator" who did sums in his head and printed them on the machine.
The first machines worked all right for the inventor, but inexperienced operators obtained surprising results through punching the keys and jerking the crank.
To meet this trouble and make the machines "fool proof," he invented the "automatic control" in 1890. This was a governor, called the "dash pot"--a small cylinder partially filled with oil, and in which was a plunger. This, in connection with an ingenious management of springs, absorbed the shocks and governed the machine so that no matter what was done to it, it would operate only at a certain speed. It is this same shock-absorbing device which is used to catch the recoil on the immense siege guns used in modern warfare.
Other improvements were made, and in 1891 the first hundred machines that were really marketable were manufactured. While still flushed with his success, Burroughs thought of the first fifty machines which had proved such a disappointment. These machines still remained in a dusty storeroom to mock him. Determined to get them out of his sight and memory, he seized them and threw them one by one from a window to the pavement below.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "THERE"S AN END TO MY TROUBLES," SAID WILLIAM SEWARD BURROUGHS AS HE THREW INTO THE STREET THE FIRST FIFTY ADDING MACHINES HE HAD MADE
He wished nothing to remain to remind him of this early failure.
_Courtesy of the Burroughs Adding Machine Company._]
When he had disposed of the last one, he called Mr. Boyer to see the ruin. "There," he exclaimed, "I have ended the last of my troubles."
The first machines were called "Registering Accountants," and "Arithmometers." Burroughs lived to see the fulfilment of his dreams and the machine a commercial success. He died September 14, 1898, at his country home in Citronelle, Alabama, a victim of tuberculosis.
There were at that time 8,000 banks in the country, and it was Burroughs" idea that as soon as these were supplied the market for adding machines would be exhausted. Today, there are more than 200,000 adding machines of that one make in use.
The need for an all-around office a.s.sistant that could multiply, divide, subtract as easily as it could add, was an idea nourished in the mind and thought of a young student of the University of Michigan.
After graduation, Jay R. Monroe turned his attention to clerical and commercial lines. He became acquainted with all the different types of adding and so-called calculating machines. He saw their limitations and restrictions. He saw the need for versatility--for more simplicity in operation--for getting away from arbitrary rules--for release from the sapping mental tax.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LATEST MODEL CALCULATING MACHINE
_Courtesy of the Monroe Calculating Machine Company._]
So in 1911 Monroe met Mr. Baldwin. Mr. Monroe realized the possibilities of Mr. Baldwin"s idea. Together they set about designing the machine to make it as nearly perfect as possible in adaptation to the needs of modern business.
They produced a machine in which the best of the European features are said to be combined with the operating ease and simplicity of American-made machines. Provision is made for the correction of errors, and operation is in two directions, forward for addition and multiplication, and backward for subtraction and division. The latest model is a desk machine, occupying less than one square foot of s.p.a.ce and weighing about twenty-six pounds.
One of the latest developments of the adding machine is a type that will post ledgers and statements. This machine is said to be the final step in relieving bookkeeping of its drudgery.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE "DUODECILLION"--THE LARGEST CAPACITY ADDING MACHINE IN THE WORLD--HAS FORTY ROWS OF KEYS AND WILL ADD TO WITHIN A UNIT OF TEN DUODECILLIONS
To appreciate this prodigious figure, imagine that a marvelous high-speed flying machine were invented that would go to the sun and back in a day. If you made this 186,000,000-mile trip every day, it would take you just 14,729,700,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years to travel a duodecillion miles.
_Courtesy of the Burroughs Adding Machine Company._]
How Big is the Largest Adding Machine in the World?
The largest adding machine ever made was produced in 1915 and has a capacity of forty columns, or within one unit of ten duodecillions. This is a number too prodigious for the mind of man to grasp. This machine was exhibited at the Panama Expositions in 1915.