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Virtual Museum > The early ones > simple adding machines
Small Adding Machines
As the name indicate, they were primarily designed to add numbers. They came in many format and number of columns. The principle was pretty much the same for all of them:
- Slide the number you want to add
- if you go over 10, go back completely up on the column and this will carry one to the next column.

Well, basically it was simply a way to avoid writing the additions on a paper.

One interesting thing to note, the original patent was from a French man, Louis Troncet in 1889. He called his invention the Arithmographe. A copy of the patent can be found below (in French, of course).
Arithmographe patent

Above (top of the page) are a few examples of these machines.
Note that even though we have only 8 columns, most of the names refer to 9. This is because you were able to add 9 digits numbers (999,999,999)

A smaller type of adders was also sold with fewer columns, but allowing you to do Addition and subtraction on the same side.
Here is an example of the Arithma


A Hybrid one, this ALCO has the adder functions on one side, and a slide rule on the other:
   

Here are a few more Adders for your viewing pleasure
   
Here is a short video explaining how to use these Adders. Sorry about the quality, it was my first video, and I just recovered from a nasty cold...


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