The first adding machine 1672. When and by whom was the first adding machine invented? Multiplication by a small number

Mathematical engineering originates at the end of the 19th century with the invention of adding machines. Among them - the Thomson machine, as well as the Odner machine. The latter is considered the prototype of all adding machines, it was one of the most popular. Odner's arithmometer at one time made a breakthrough in this industry.

The adding machine was invented in 1874. But the production of adding machines began later. At that time, its design turned out to be the most successful of similar devices known to the world at that time. The main element of the device was the so-called Odner wheel, which was a wheel with a variable number of teeth.

Odner adding machine

Odner's wheel had nine teeth, the angle between two of them was represented as one. The adding machine had one wheel each, which was provided to one category. It worked like this: the number of teeth that were put forward by the lever was equal to the set figure.

When the handle was turned, the teeth meshed with the intermediate gears and turned the counting register wheel. The angle at which this wheel turned was proportional to the number set on the levers. Thus, the set number was transferred to the counter.

Odner was not the only one working towards the development of such a wheel. Patents for similar inventions were owned by Logney and Baldwin, but they failed to implement them in a ready-made device. Therefore, Odner became the developer of the device.

Wilgoldt Teofilovich Odner

Odner was born in Sweden in 1869, after some time he moved to Russia. He worked and lived in St. Petersburg, first at a factory, and then in the service of the Expedition for the Procurement of State Papers, which at that time was the largest enterprise in St. Petersburg. The expedition was engaged in the preparation of papers of the state, it was founded with the aim of controlling and eliminating the possibility of manufacturing counterfeit ones in factories, which was common before its appearance.

During the work, Odner showed himself as an outstanding inventor with a creative approach. He was engaged in the mechanization of production sites and successfully. Including his adding machine was designed to mechanize the numbering of credit bills - an operation that had previously been performed entirely manually. Thanks to him, we also received such inventions as turnstiles, which were later used on steamboats, the voting box, tissue paper.

Adding machine

The device had a reliable design, which was so successful that after a long time it received practically no changes. In addition, the advantages of the counting device were physical parameters and a convenient form, which allowed it to be widely used and thereby facilitate the work of the calculator.

The characteristics of the device were as follows:

• the volume of the device was small, the area it occupied was only 5 by 7 inches;
• the device had high strength, and a simple mechanism of operation made it easy to repair;
• when changing work skills, the action with an adding machine could be done quickly enough;
• learning to work on an adding machine did not take much time and was not difficult, everyone could learn how to work with it;
• The adding machine always gave a true result at the output, provided that all actions were followed correctly.

Since, after the invention of his device, Odner did not have the funds to start production, he decided to transfer the rights to the invention to Koenigsberger and Co. She, unfortunately, managed to build only a batch of adding machines. They were produced at the Ludwig Nobel factory, and today it is believed that only one device from this batch has survived. This unique specimen is in the museum. The first patents were taken as a basis, which distinguished this adding machine from those mass-produced by the following features:

• unlike a conventional adding machine, the handle of this sample rotated in the opposite direction: clockwise when subtracting, and counterclockwise when adding;
• the results counter was located above the revolution counter;
• the numbers were put on wheels, and the adding machine had special windows for reading them;
• the bit depth of the setting mechanism was eight, the counter of results - ten, and the revolutions - seven, which was somewhat less than that of serial samples;
• the number 11 is on the parts, it is assumed that this is the serial number.

For several years, Odner worked on a new version of the adding machine, and later he invented a device, the design of which included intermediate mechanisms and allowed the handle to be rotated in a direction more familiar to humans. For the operation of addition and subtraction, it now turned clockwise, that is, away from itself. The setting figures were placed on the front panel, and the counters were nearby. The accuracy of calculations has also improved because there are more registers.

The production of new improved machines began already in 1886 in a small workshop. But there were some difficulties: it turned out that all rights were retained by Keninsberg and Co., so it was illegal for Odner to produce adding machines.

In 1890, he applied to the Department of Commerce with a request to give him a ten-year privilege to produce improved machines. With this permission, he finally becomes the legal owner of the invention. A small workshop, where the inventor and his partners started the production of the first models of an improved design, gradually expands and becomes a factory. In the first year of their work, they produced only 500 adding meters, and after six years their annual production amounted to 5000 such devices.

Adding machines are widely known and exhibited at international exhibitions. In 1893, they were presented at the World Exhibition in Chicago and received the highest award, after - a silver medal at the All-Russian Industry Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod and gold medals in Brussels, as well as in Stockholm and Paris.

In 1807 he became the sole owner of the plant. And since 1897, the stigma "Odner's mechanical plant" has been put on the adding machine. Odner himself is still engaged in design activities, gradually begins to invent new models, and the design of the mechanism improves. The standard bit depth of the setting mechanism at that time was nine, thirteen for the result counter and eight for the revolution counter. In addition, the carriage becomes larger capacity.

The trading house of Emmanuil Mitenets is engaged in the sale of the adding machine, and it costs 115 rubles. After the death of V. T. Odner from a heart disease on September 2, 1905, friends and relatives continued his work. The new brand under which the devices are produced at the plant is called "Odner-original". The plant is renamed after the revolution, and the production of the adding machine is discontinued.

The production of mechanical calculating machines was revived in the 1920s at the Dzerzhinsky State Mechanical Plant in Moscow. Gradually, adding machines are being improved, they are being produced under other brands: Soyuz, Dynamo, Felix. The latter were the most popular. Adding machines "Felix" differed in smaller dimensions and improved transport of the mechanism. A lot of them were produced in the USSR, several million cars over 40 years without making significant changes to the design of the device.

Further development of the adding machine

Manufacture and release of devices continued around the world. Among them, the most famous were "Facite", "Voltaire", "Merchant" and others. "Facite" was a direct descendant of the adding machine of the Odner system. In 1932, on its basis, the first keyboard adding machine was developed. Under the brands "Brunswee", "Walter" and "Triumphant", the first electromechanical adding machines were developed. Domestic similar machine "VK-1" was created at the Penza plant "Schetmash" in 1951.

After that, it became the basis for the production of semi-automatic machines with ten keys "VK-2", "VK-3", which at one time were very widespread.

One of the most successful modifications of the Odner adding machine produced in the Soviet Union is the Felix machine. It worked reliably and was widely available.

Now adding machines are considered a rarity. They can be found mainly in museums and private collections. And the cost of the earliest and rare models can be quite high.

It all started with a fairy tale. After all, Gulliver's Travels is still a fairy tale, isn't it? The tale told by the wicked and witty Jonathan Swift (1667 - 1745). A fairy tale in which he ridiculed many of the stupidities and stupidities of his contemporary world. Why did he ridicule - shamelessly urinating on everything that is possible. Like the hero of his work, who flooded the royal palace in Lilliput with urine when it caught fire.

In the third book about Gulliver's travels, this sane ship's doctor finds himself on the flying island of Laputa, where brilliant scientists live. Well, there is only one step from genius to insanity, and, according to Jonathan Swift, Laputian scientists have taken this step. Their inventions should promise benefits to all mankind. Meanwhile, they look funny and pathetic.

Among other Laputian scientists, there was one who invented a machine for writing brilliant inventions, novels, and scientific treatises. All of this had to happen completely randomly on a machine made up of many dice-like cubes. Forty students twisted the handles that set in motion all these cubes, which as a result turned with different faces, forming all sorts of words and combinations of words, from which, sooner or later, brilliant creations were to be formed.

It is known that J. Swift in the form of this scientist parodied his older contemporary Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646 - 1716). To be honest, Leibniz was not worthy of such ridicule. On his scientific account there are many discoveries and inventions, including mathematical analysis, differential and integral calculus, combinatorics and mathematical logic. Tsar Peter I (it was written about him on 04/25/2014) during his stay in Germany in 1712 met with Leibniz. Leibniz was able to inspire the Russian emperor with two important ideas that influenced the further development of the Russian Empire. This is the idea of ​​creating the Imperial Academy of Sciences and the idea of ​​the "Table of Ranks"

Leibniz's inventions include the world's first adding machine, invented by him in 1672. This adding machine was supposed to automate arithmetic calculations, which until then were considered the prerogative of the human mind. In general, Leibniz to the question "can a machine think?" answered positively, and Swift ridiculed him for this.

Strictly speaking, G.W. Leibniz cannot be considered the real inventor of the adding machine. He came up with the idea, he made the prototype. But the real adding machine was invented in 1874 by Vilgod Odner. V. Odner was a Swede, but lived in St. Petersburg. He patented his invention first in Russia and then in Germany. And the production of Odner adding machines began in 1890 in St. Petersburg, and in 1891 in Germany. So Russia is not only the birthplace of elephants, but also the birthplace of adding machines.

After the revolution, the production of adding machines in the USSR was preserved. Arithmometers were originally produced in Moscow, at the Dzerzhinsky plant. That's why they called him "Felix". Until the 1960s, adding machines were produced by factories in Kursk and Penza.

The “highlight” of the design of the adding machine by V. Odner was a special gear wheel with a variable number of teeth. This wheel was called the “Odner Wheel” and, depending on the position of the special lever, could have from one to nine teeth.

There were 9 digits on the panel of the adding machine. Accordingly, 9 Odner wheels were fixed on the axis of the adding machine. The numbers in the digits were set by moving the lever along the panel to one of 10 positions, from 0 to 9. At the same time, the corresponding number of teeth advanced on each of the wheels. After typing a number, it was possible to turn the handle in one direction (for addition) or in the other direction (for subtraction). In this case, the teeth of each wheel engaged with one of the 9 intermediate gears and turned them by the corresponding number of teeth. The corresponding number appeared on the resulting counter. After that, the second number was typed and the two numbers were added or subtracted. On the carriage of the adding machine there was a handle revolution counter, which, if necessary, was reset to zero.

Multiplication was performed by multiple addition, and division by multiple subtraction. But multiplying multi-digit numbers, for example, 15 by 25, by first setting the number 15, and then scrolling the adding machine 25 times in one direction, was tiring. With such an approach, an error could easily creep into the calculations.

For multiplication or division of multi-digit numbers, the carriage was made movable. At the same time, multiplication, for example, by 25, was reduced to shifting the carriage to the right by one digit, two turns of the knob in the “+” direction. After that, the carriage moved to the left and the handle turned 5 more times. The division was carried out in the same way, only the handle should be rotated in the direction of "-"

The adding machine was a simple but very effective device. Until electronic computers and calculators appeared, it was widely used in all sectors of the national economy of the USSR.

And in scientific institutions too. Calculations for the atomic project were carried out on arithmometers. But the calculation of the launch of satellites into orbit and the calculations of the hydrogen bomb were very complex. It was no longer possible to produce them manually. So in the Soviet Union, the go-ahead was given to the production and use of electronic computers. Although cybernetics, as you know, was a public wench in the bed of American imperialism.

who created the very first adding machine? and got the best answer

Answer from Lunar Cat[guru]
150-100 BC e. Antikythera mechanism created in Greece
1623 - Wilhelm Schickard invented the "computing clock"
1642 - Blaise Pascal invented the "pascaline"
1672 - The Leibniz Calculator is created - the world's first adding machine. In 1672, a two-bit machine appeared, and in 1694, a twelve-bit machine. This adding machine did not receive practical distribution, as it was too complicated and expensive for its time.
1674 - Moreland machine created
1820 - Thomas de Colmar began serial production of adding machines. In general, they were similar to the Leibniz adding machine, but had a number of design differences.
50s 19th century - P. L. Chebyshev created the first adding machine in Russia.
1890 - serial production of Odner adding machines, the most common type of adding machines of the 20th century, began. Odner's arithmometers include, in particular, the famous "Felix".
1919 - Mercedes-Euklid VII appeared - the world's first calculating machine, that is, an adding machine capable of independently performing all four basic arithmetic operations.
1950s - The rise of calculating machines and semi-automatic arithmometers. It was at this time that most of the models of electromechanical computers were released.
1969 - The peak of the production of arithmometers in the USSR. About 300 thousand Felixes and VK-1s were produced.
late 1970s - early 1980s - Around this time, electronic calculators finally ousted adding meters from store shelves

Answer from Emnobelos[guru]
Mathematics professor Wilhelm Schickard is the first known six-wheel computing machine.
A more advanced binary arithmometer was created in 1673 by Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. The first serial production of adding machines with an accuracy of up to the 20th decimal place since 1821 by the creator Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar (the answer from the user "Moon cat" is not accurate ...)

Answer from Vovan de Mort[guru]
Johann Sebastian Arithmometer

Answer from Odins[guru]
it was a car with wheels and numbers that appeared during the time of the Porizh revolution
and so on, its earliest appearance was in ancient Greece, when a certain copper device was found on one of the sunken goleras capable of calculating and showing many astronomical objects

Answer from 3 answers[guru]

Designed for exact multiplication and division, as well as for addition and subtraction.

Desktop or portable: Most often, adding machines were desktop or "knee" (like modern laptops), occasionally there were pocket models (Curta). In this they differed from large floor computers such as tabulators (T-5M) or mechanical computers (Z-1, Charles Babbage's Difference Engine).

Mechanical: Numbers are entered into the adding machine, converted and transmitted to the user (displayed in counter windows or printed on tape) using only mechanical devices. In this case, the adding machine can use only a mechanical drive (that is, to work on them, you need to constantly turn the handle. This primitive version is used, for example, in Felix) or perform part of the operations using an electric motor (The most advanced adding machines are calculating machines, for example, Facit CA1-13", almost every operation uses an electric motor).

Exact calculation: Adding meters are digital (and not analog, like a slide rule) devices. Therefore, the result of the calculation does not depend on the reading error and is absolutely accurate.

Multiplication and division: Arithmometers are designed primarily for multiplication and division. Therefore, almost all adding machines have a device that displays the number of additions and subtractions - a revolution counter (since multiplication and division are most often implemented as sequential addition and subtraction; for details, see below).

Addition and subtraction: Adding machines can perform addition and subtraction. But on primitive lever models (for example, on Felix), these operations are performed very slowly - faster than multiplication and division, but noticeably slower than on the simplest adding machines or even manually.

Not programmable: When working on an adding machine, the procedure is always set manually - immediately before each operation, press the corresponding key or turn the corresponding lever. This feature of the adding machine is not included in the definition, since there were practically no programmable analogues of adding machines.

Historical overview

Adding machine models

Calculating machine Felix (Museum of Water, St. Petersburg)

Adding machine Facit CA 1-13

Arithmometer Mercedes R38SM

Models of adding machines differed mainly in the degree of automation (from non-automatic, capable of independently performing only addition and subtraction, to fully automatic, equipped with mechanisms for automatic multiplication, division, and some others) and in design (the most common were models based on the Odner wheel and the Leibniz roller) . It should be immediately noted that non-automatic and automatic machines were produced at the same time - automatic ones, of course, were much more convenient, but they cost about two orders of magnitude more expensive than non-automatic ones.

Non-automatic arithmometers on the Odhner wheel

• "Ariθmometer of the system V. T. Odner"- the first arithmometers of this type. Produced during the life of the inventor (approximately 1880-1905) at a factory in St. Petersburg.
• "Union"- produced since 1920 at the Moscow plant of counting and typewriters.
• "Original Dynamo" produced since 1920 at the Dynamo plant in Kharkov.
• "Felix"- the most common adding machine in the USSR. Produced from 1929 to the end of the 1970s.

Automatic arithmometers on the Odhner wheel

• Facit CA 1-13- one of the smallest automatic arithmometers
• VK-3- his Soviet clone.

Non-automatic arithmometers on a Leibniz roller

• Thomas adding machines and a number of similar lever models produced before the beginning of the 20th century.
• Keyboard machines such as Rheinmetall Ie or Nisa K2

Automatic arithmometers on a Leibniz roller

• Rheinmetall SAR - One of the top two automatic computers in Germany. Its distinctive feature - a small ten-key (like on a calculator) keyboard to the left of the main one - was used to enter a multiplier when multiplying.
• VMA, VMM - its Soviet clones.
• Friden SRW is one of the few adding machines capable of automatically extracting square roots.

Other arithmometers

Mercedes Euklid 37MS, 38MS, R37MS, R38MS, R44MS - these calculating machines were the main competitors of Rheinmetall SAR in Germany. They worked a little slower, but had a large number of functions.

Usage

Addition

1. Set the first term on the levers.
2. Turn the knob away from you (clockwise). In this case, the number on the levers is entered into the summation counter.
3. Set the second term on the levers.
4. Turn the handle away from you. In this case, the number on the levers will be added to the number in the summation counter.
5. The result of the addition is on the summation counter.

Subtraction

1. Set on the levers the reduced .
2. Turn the handle away from you. In this case, the number on the levers is entered into the summation counter.
3. Set the subtrahend on the levers.
4. Turn the handle towards you. In this case, the number on the levers is subtracted from the number on the summation counter.
5. The result of the subtraction on the summation counter.

If the subtraction yields a negative number, the arithmometer will ring a bell. Since the adding machine does not operate with negative numbers, it is necessary to “undo” the last operation: without changing the position of the levers and the console, turn the knob in the opposite direction.

Multiplication

Multiplication by a small number

1. Set the first multiplier on the levers.
2. Turn the knob away from you until the second multiplier appears on the spin counter.

Multiplication using the console

By analogy with column multiplication, they multiply by each digit, writing the results with an offset. The offset is determined by the position in which the second multiplier is located.

To move the console, use the handle in front of the adding machine (Felix) or the arrow keys (VK-1, Rheinmetall).

Let's take an example: 1234x5678:

1. Move the console all the way to the left.
2. Set the multiplier on the levers with a larger (by eye) sum of digits (5678).
3. Turn the knob away from you until the first digit (to the right) of the second multiplier (4) appears on the spin counter.
4. Move the console one step to the right.
5. Similarly, do steps 3 and 4 for the remaining numbers (2nd, 3rd and 4th). As a result, the spin counter should have a second multiplier (1234).
6. The result of the multiplication is on the summation counter.

Division

Consider the case of dividing 8765 by 432:

1. Set the dividend (8765) on the levers.
2. Move the console to the fifth digit (four steps to the right).
3. Mark the end of the integer part of the divisible with metal "commas" on all counters (the commas should be in a column before the number 5).
4. Turn the handle away from you. In this case, the dividend is entered into the summation counter.
5. Reset the spin counter.
6. Position the divider (432) on the levers.
7. Move the console so that the most significant bit of the dividend is aligned with the most significant bit of the divisor, that is, one step to the right.
8. Turn the knob towards you until you get a negative number (enumeration, marked by the sound of a bell). Return the handle one turn back.
9. Move the console one step to the left.
10. Follow steps 8 and 9 to the extreme position of the console.
11. The result is the modulus of the number on the spin counter, the integer and fractional parts are separated by a comma. The rest is on the summation counter.

Notes

see also

Literature

1. Organization and technique of accounting mechanization; B. Drozdov, G. Evstigneev, V. Isakov; 1952
2. Calculating machines; I. S. Evdokimov, G. P. Evstigneev, V. N. Kriushin; 1955
3. Computers, V. N. Ryazankin, G. P. Evstigneev, N. N. Tresvyatsky. Part 1.
4. Catalog of the Central Bureau of Technical Information for Instrumentation and Automation; 1958

Links

• // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.
• Photos of the Adding Machine VK-1 (Schetmash), including from the inside (click to enlarge)
• Arif-ru.narod.ru - A large Russian-language site dedicated to adding machines (Russian)
• Photos of Soviet adding machines on the site of Sergei Frolov (Russian)
• rechenmaschinen-illustrated.com: Photographs and brief descriptions of many hundreds of adding machine models.
• (English)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1694 created a machine that made it possible to perform multiplication operations mechanically and was called the Leibniz calculator (arithmometer). The main part of the adding machine was a stepped roller, the so-called cylinder with teeth of different lengths, they could interact with the counting wheel. And moving this wheel along the roller, it clung to the required number of teeth, which ensured the installation of the desired number.

Essentially, the Leibniz arithmometer was the first arithmetic machine in the world that was designed to perform the four basic arithmetic operations and allow a 9-bit multiplier to be used with an 8-bit multiplicand to produce a 16-bit product. Compared with Pascal's device, the adding machine significantly accelerated the performance of arithmetic operations, but was not widely used due to the lack of demand for it and design inaccuracies. But the very idea of ​​Leibniz turned out to be very fruitful - to install a stepped roller in his adding machine. Photos for comparison can be found on the Internet.

According to Norbert Wiener, Leibniz could also become the patron saint of cybernetics, referring to his work on the binary number system and mathematical logic. However, in those days, scientists rarely turned out to be theorists, so Leibniz became a milestone in the history of computer science and cybernetics. This is how the prototype appeared - the first adding machine 1672.