Consul Educated Monkey - Francis WEB

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Consul Educated Monkey

Virtual Museum > Toys and Fun

This was a Toy, patented in 1915, where the Monkey would show the result of the multiplication of 2 numbers:

You simply move the feet of the monkey to different numbers, i.e. 5 and 9 as shown in the picture above, and the hands of the monkey will show you the result of the multiplication: 45 in the example above.
I searched for more details about this toy, and found a very interesting story:
In 1909, a Movie was called: Consul crosses the Atlantic. This was a story about a Monkey, taking the boat from Africa to America. On the boat, the monkey did all kind of tricks. I was only able to locate a picture from the movie, showing the Monkey, named Consul, smoking a cigar !

The story goes that this monkey later toured throughout America, and visited a company making calculators. A couple years later, one of the employees, even if he wasn't present when the monkey visited. had the idea to create a toy based on multiplications, and named it Consul, like the one in the movie.
This was patented in 1915, and you can find a copy of the patent below:
Patent 1188490 from 1916
An interesting brochure was sold with the toy, showing how to use, and giving some directions:

Just for fun, read the last line, shown below:

Interesting selling point: even if your kids are stupid, they can still play this game !!!

Although the toy was not a big hit, I think it should be part of the history of calculators, because it was an ingenious idea and help us relate to what happened at that time.
See a short video below demonstrating how to use the toy.

This page has been seen times since January 2017
 
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