Accession No
4403
Brief Description
adding machine, by Automatic Adding Machine Company, U.S.A., c. 1910
Origin
U.S.A.; New York
Maker
Automatic Adding Machine Company
Class
calculating
Earliest Date
1910
Latest Date
1910
Inscription Date
Material
metal (steel); plastic
Dimensions
case length 120mm; breadth 85mm; thickness 28mm
Special Collection
Provenance
Purchased from Tesseract.
Inscription
‘AUTOMATIC ADDING MACHINE CO.
NEW YORK, U.S.A.
GOLDEN GEM
ADDING MACHINE
PAT. MAR.1-04-MAR.27-06-MAR.19-07.
UNITED STATES AND FOREIGN PATENT PENDING’ (front)
Description Notes
American mechanical adding machine. Plated steel shell contains 7 vertical adder chains with 7 readout windows. Clearing crank and hinged table stand. Original soft case.
Condition good; incomplete (stylus missing)
References
Events
Description
Mechanical adding machine
Early mechanical adding machines consisted of a keyboard on which to enter the numbers, a level to be pulled to add them (or pushed to subtract them), and an accumulator to display the results. The accumlator was a set of geared wheels, with numbers 0 to 9 printed around their circumferences, and each wheel corresponding to a decimal place. Each time a wheel made a full rotation, the next decimal place up moved round by one. This basic mechanism remained very similar until the mid 1960s.
18/10/2002
Created by: Saffron Clackson on 18/10/2002
FM:44703
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