Object Details
- distributor
- Keuffel & Esser Co.
- retailer
- Keuffel & Esser Co.
- Description
- This manually operated, non-printing stepped drum calculating machine has a brass mechanism on an iron support, both painted black. The machine is mounted on a slab of wood and has a rough wooden cover.
- Eight levers are used to set stepped drums. A row of windows below the levers reveals the number entered. A lever on the left is set for addition and multiplication or subtraction and division. A crank on the right is turned repeatedly to calculate.
- A movable carriage has a row of nine small windows at the front that reveal discs below that register the number of revolutions. A row of 16 discs behind this records the result. Zeroing levers for both of these registers are on the right side of the carriage, and a handle for lifting the carriage is on the left. A zeroing handle for the stepped drums is on the left side of the front of the machine. A bell rings when the result passes through zero.
- A mark on the cover reads: Peerless. A mark on the front of the machine reads: KEUFFEL & ESSER Co (/) NEW YORK. Another mark there reads: GERMANY. The serial number, marked on the back rim of the carriage at the left, is 3563.
- Compare MA.325564, MA.326642, and MA.323628.
- This machine was donated by Robert E. Devine of Rockville, Maryland, in 1964.Web sources suggest the was Robert E. Devine (1927-2016), a native of Washington, DC,who had degrees in library science and worked at the Library of Congress and as Chief Information Officer at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Devine died at his retirement home in Port Orange, Florida.
- In about 1904, the German firm of Mathias Bäuerle, a manufacturer of clocks, began making a stepped drum calculating machine on the design of Tobias Bäuerle, a son of the founder of the company. It was dubbed the Peerless. Keuffel & Esser Company, an American manufacturer of drawing instruments, soon offered the Peerless in its catalogs.
- The 1913 Keuffel & Esser catalog (p. 292–293), 1915 catalog (pp. 292–293), and 1921 catalog (pp. 290–291) show a machine like this one, although it is marked “PEERLESS” on the side. The placement of the Keuffel & Esser mark is different, and one of the zeroing levers apparently is on the left, not the right, side of the carriage. In 1913, the machine was offered in 3 capacities, 6x7x12, 8x9x16, and 10x11x20. These versions sold for $250.00, $300.00, and $375.00. K & E no longer offered a reckoning machine in its 1927 catalog, and Peerless was not making a machine of this capacity by 1928.
- References:
- Keuffel & Esser, Catalog.
- E. Martin, The Calculating Machines (die Rechenmaschinen), trans. P. A. Kidwell and M. R. Williams, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992, pp. 149–151.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Credit Line
- Gift of Robert E. Devine
- ca 1915
- ID Number
- MA.325564
- catalog number
- 325564
- accession number
- 255933
- Object Name
- calculating machine
- Physical Description
- iron (overall material)
- brass (overall material)
- wood (overall material)
- Measurements
- overall: 18.2 cm x 61.2 cm x 27 cm; 7 5/32 in x 24 3/32 in x 10 5/8 in
- place made
- Germany: Baden-Württemberg, Black Forest
- place distributed
- United States: New Jersey, Hoboken
- See more items in
- Medicine and Science: Mathematics
- Calculating Machines
- Science & Mathematics
- National Museum of American History
- Subject
- Mathematics
- Record ID
- nmah_690662
- GUID (Link to Original Record)
- https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746a5-105a-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa
