Burroughs Adding and Listing Machine
1888 · Key-Driven with Printer · Work 424 of 1,871
A tall adding machine under a glass and black iron hood, the full keyboard visible beneath it with keys in columns, each key cap bearing exactly one digit from 1 to 9, a printing platen and a paper roll at the top, the front glass panel etched with lettering reading "Burroughs", an ornate cast iron frame with a long pull handle on the right side, every other surface plain black iron and clear glass, standing on a dark baize-covered table before a deep neutral background, a single raking light from the left glinting through the glass onto the mechanism.
- What it was used for
- A full-keyboard adding machine with a printing mechanism, meant to take over the bank clerk's work - William Seward Burroughs had himself been a bank clerk in Auburn, New York. The production Style No. 1 has, on the Smithsonian's account, nine columns of keys, a repeat key and a total key, nine number wheels and a metal case with glass sides; it was built from 1895 to 1908 with serial numbers below 2254, and carries a plate listing seven patents from 21 August 1888 to 13 December 1898. London's Science Museum records that in 1894, the year Burroughs took up direct selling, sales came to 284 machines.
- What was new
- Adding machines existed; EDN calls them unreliable. What was new with Burroughs was the combination of full keyboard, printed list and a governor that uncoupled the result from the operator's hand: the 1922 Detroit city history states that in the first machines "the human equation" had not been taken into account - operate it with a heavier touch and you got a different answer. The Science Museum dates the oil-filled dashpot that cured it to 1890-91. The year in the title is a year of grant: the four patents US 388,116 to 388,119 were granted on 21 August 1888 and filed in 1885. The production Style No. 1 was built, on the Smithsonian's account, only from 1895. The founding year of the American Arithmometer Company is disputed too: the Science Museum and EDN give 1886, the Detroit city history January 1888.