Virtual Museum > The early ones > simple adding machines
It looks like inventors were very good at creating new mechanisms and gears for the calculators, but somehow they didn't really know what to name them. Here is a perfect example: The ADDACHINE
Patent 1243224 from 1917 to Fred W. RODOLF
We can see that it must a combination of ADDing mACHINE but still, it sounds very strange. This goes with the others like Comptator, Comptometer, Addometer, Maximator, etc.
I don't know much about this machine except for a few ads in technical revues from 1917, and also from the patent:
Patent 1243224 from 1917 to Fred W. RODOLFHere is the description of the adder on the first page of the patent
Not too difficult to understand, he wanted to have an adding machine with 3 digits, consisting of wheels that you could move using a stylus. The whole real benefit being an automatic carry of the ten.
However the only picture I found about this device shows that it turned out a different model, with only 2 wheels. As you can see in this ad from 1918:
And a real picture that I found on the WEB:
Overall, not a very useful device if you are limited to 2 digits. It tried to copy the WEBB adder but I am pretty sure it was not as successful, because we can't find anymore of these today (or really difficult to find).