Burroughs Adding Machine Was Invented By
Jkobe Peoples
An adding machine is a class of mechanical calculator, usually specialized for bookkeeping calculations.In the United States, the earliest adding machines were usually built to read in dollars and cents. Adding machines were ubiquitous office equipment until they were phased out in favor of calculators in the 1970s and by personal computers beginning in about 1985. The older adding machines were rarely seen in American office settings by the year 2000.
Blaise Pascal and Wilhelm Schickard were the two original inventors of the mechanical calculator in 1642.[1] For Pascal, this was an adding machine that could perform additions and subtractions directly and multiplication and divisions by repetitions, while Schickard's machine, invented several decades earlier, was less functionally efficient but was supported by a mechanised form of multiplication tables. These two were followed by a series of inventors and inventions leading to those of Thomas de Colmar, who launched the mechanical calculator industry in 1851 when he released his simplified arithmometer (it took him thirty years to refine his machine, patented in 1820, into a simpler and more reliable form). However, they did not gain widespread use until Dorr E. Felt started manufacturing his comptometer (1887) and Burroughs started the commercialization of differently conceived adding machines (1892).[2]
To add a new list of numbers and arrive at a total, the user was first required to "ZERO" the machine. Then, to add sets of numbers, the user was required to press numbered keys on a keyboard, which would remain depressed (rather than immediately rebound like the keys of a computer keyboard or typewriter or the buttons of a typical modern machine). The user would then pull the crank, which caused the numbers to be shown on the rotary wheels, and the keys to be released (i.e. to pop back up) in preparation for the next input. To add, for example, the amounts of 30.72 and 4.49 (which, in adding machine terms, on a decimal adding machine is 3,072 plus 449 "decimal units"), the following process took place: Press the 3 key in the column fourth from the right (multiples of one thousand), the 7 key in the column second from right (multiples of ten) and the 2 key in the rightmost column (multiples of 1). Pull the crank. The rotary wheels now showed 3072. Press the 4 key in the third column from the right, the 4 key in the second column from right, and the 9 key in the rightmost column. Pull the crank. The rotary wheels now show a running 'total' of 3521 which, when interpreted using the decimal currency colour-coding of the key columns, equates to 35.21. Keyboards typically did not have or need 0 (zero) keys; one simply did not press any key in the column containing a zero. Trailing zeros (those to the right of a number), were there by default because when a machine was zeroed, all numbers visible on the rotary wheels were reset to zero.
A later adding machine, called the comptometer, did not require that a crank be pulled to add. Numbers were input simply by pressing keys. The machine was thus driven by finger power. Multiplication was similar to that on the adding machine, but users would "form" up their fingers over the keys to be pressed and press them down the multiple of times required. Using the above example, four fingers would be used to press down twice on the 3 (fourth column), 4 (third column), 7 (second column) and 2 (first column) keys. That finger shape would then move left two columns and press once. Usually a small crank near the wheels would be used to zero them. Subtraction was possible by adding complementary numbers; keys would also carry a smaller, complementary digit to help the user form complementary numbers. Division was also possible by putting the dividend to the left end and performing repeated subtractions by using the complementary method.[3]
William Seward Burroughs received a patent for his adding machine on August 25, 1888. He was a founder of American Arithmometer Company, which became Burroughs Corporation and evolved to produce electronic billing machines and mainframes, and eventually merged with Sperry to form Unisys. The grandson of the inventor of the adding machine is Beat author William S. Burroughs; a collection of his essays is called The Adding Machine.
Burroughs was the son of a mechanic and worked with machines throughout his childhood. While a small boy, his parents moved to Auburn, New York, where he and his brothers were educated in public schools.
In 1875, he started working as a bank clerk. Much of his job consisted of laboriously reviewing ledgers for errors.[1] Burroughs then became interested in developing an adding machine. At the bank, there had been a number of prototypes, but in inexperienced hands, they would sometimes give incorrect answers. Burroughs' did not find his clerical work agreeable, as he was fond of mechanics. He resigned after seven years working as a clerk
In the early 1880s, Burroughs was advised by a doctor to move to an area with a warmer climate. He moved to St. Louis, Missouri where he worked in the Boyer Machine Shop. These new surroundings hastened the development of an existing idea: an adding machine. His new job gave him the opportunity to build his prototype. Accuracy was the foundation of his work. He made his design drawings on metal plates to prevent distortion.
Burroughs filed his first patent for the invention of a "calculating machine" in 1885. It was designed to ease the monotony of clerical arithmetic. By 1890, they were well known in the banking industry, and adoption spread.[3]
He was awarded the Franklin Institute's John Scott Legacy Medal shortly before his death.[1] He was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.[2] He was the grandfather of Beat Generation writer William S. Burroughs and great-grandfather of William S. Burroughs Jr., who was also a writer.
William Seward Burroughs invented the first practical adding and listing machine. Born in Rochester, New York, Burroughs began his career as a bank clerk. Working in a bank inspired the young inventor with a vision of a mechanical device that would relieve accountants and bookkeepers of the monotony of their tasks and ensure that a smaller percentage of their time was spent correcting errors.
Burroughs began work on his mechanical accounting device shortly after moving to St. Louis in 1882. A machine shop owner gave him a work space and provided him with a young assistant, Alfred Doughty, later president of the Burroughs Adding Machine Company. Burroughs received a patent in 1888 for his "Calculating Machine." Burroughs and several St. Louis businessmen formed the American Arithometer Co. to market the machine. The calculating machine, however, proved to be inaccurate in everyday use, so Burroughs received a patent in 1893 for an improved calculating machine.
Burroughs retired from his company in 1897 due to poor health and moved to Citronelle, Alabama. By 1898 more than 1,000 machines had been sold, and by 1926 the company, renamed the Burroughs Adding Machine Company, had produced a million machines.
William Seward Burroughs (ca 1855-1898), the son of a machinist in upstate New York, spent some years working as a clerk before moving to St. Louis and taking up invention. From 1884, he attracted investors to aid in his development of a printing adding machine. By 1890, he had patented a machine and sent it out on trial. By the mid-1890s, the American Arithmometer Company of St. Louis was actively selling the Burroughs Registering Accountant, as they called the machine. As early as 1898 it established a factory in Britain to produce for the European market.
In 1904, American Arithmometer Company moved to Detroit. The next year, it took the name Burroughs Adding Machine Company. In the course of the early 20th century, the company made and sold a wide range of adding machines. It vigorously defended its own patent rights, and purchased those of such rival companies as Pike, Universal, and Moon-Hopkins. Burroughs also hired inventors who successfully modified its products over the years. The Patent Department maintained a collection of models, both of Burroughs inventions and of rival machines. A handful of Burroughs machines also were exhibited at the Smithsonian.
In the 1950s, Burroughs abandoned manufacture of full keyboard adding machines in favor of ten-key devices built on patents of the British Summit adding machine. Burroughs Corporation inventors devoted attention to electronic computers, but did not attempt to design electronic calculators. In 1963 it gave many of the models and machines from its Patent Department collection to the Smithsonian. The company merged with Sperry Rand Corporation in 1986 to form Unisys Corporation.
Before 1888, you did it by mind, hand and pencil, no matter how many numbers contributed to the sum. That changed with the introduction of the Burroughs Registering Accountant. The machine that, "... saves brains and time, and is three times as rapid as the old way," revolutionized the way entire industries and governments dealt with number sets. It made the adding machine a staple of the office for more than a century..
On June 25, 2007, The Franklin Institute Science Museum welcomed a Burroughs Registering Accountant into its collection. This kind of machine is not unfamiliar to the Institute. Its inventor, William Seward Burroughs, was awarded The Scott Medal in 1897 from the Institute for the combination of calculator and printer. The fully mechanical machine performs only one mathematical function: addition.
When a twenty-five-year-old Burroughs became frustrated with the time involved in adding numbers as a bank clerk in 1882, he set out to speed up the process mechanically. Patent application was made in 1885 and major production started in 1888.
"I have been using for months the 'Burroughs Registering Accountant,' and after testing its merits and efficiency cannot see how anyone desiring accuracy coupled with expediency, can do without such a machine."
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