Goldman Chain Adder - Francis WEB

The GOLDMAN chain adder is a precursor of the GEM adder, and many people say that it even inspired it. It uses chains to move small wheels with the numbers. Then, every time the wheel rotates a full turn, the next wheel is incremented by one.

Henry Goldman (Heinrich Goldmann), the inventor of this machine, was born in Vienna in 1859. He came to the United States in 1881. He wrote a book, the ARITHMACHINIST, in which he compares all mechanical calculators of his time (1898) and introduces his own creation: the ARITHSTYLE. The book is very detailed and starts with a history of computing. Many other constructors are listed in the book and the pros and cons of each device is reviewed. Almost half of the book is simply the user manual and description of his machine, though.

By looking at the patents on the machine, we can trace the history of this invention. Here they are in chronological order:
 January 3 1899: Patent 617094
 May 9 1899 : Patent 624788
March 12 1901 : Patent 669969
March 12 1901 : Patent 669970  (yes, 2 patents the same day !!! )
September 3 1901 : Patent 681781

It seems that there were 3 types of machines, based on the prices:
5 Columns : $20
8 Columns : $25
11 columns : $30
It's kind of strange, since the Patent and the most common model that we can find have 9 columns. I guess the early machines came with 8 columns, as this is shown in the following ad :

I recently purchased one of these, and I had to perform a little surgery since the first chain did not work at all. This is shown in the video at the bottom of this page.