Cris' site on antique mechanical four-function calculators
My collection started more or less by accident, when I spotted a Remington Rand adding machine at a flea market in 2001. When the price turned out to be 5 EUR, I couldn't resist, bought it, and lugged it home, all 6kg of it.
The obligatory web search, even back then, turned up some information on the machine's year of manufacture (1949), and the fact that it blocked necessitated opening it up and having a look at the mechanism for a good clean and a spot of lubrication.
I was not too impressed with the fact that it could only add and subtract, and some more searching on the web turned up various marvelous and complicated looking machines, which could perform all four arithmetical operations.
Dreaming started on how it would be interesting to own a single machine of all the commonly used operating principles - pinwheels, stepped drums, and ratchet wheel - but where to find them ?
I found a Schubert pinwheel machine a few months later on another flea market, overpaid for it, and again it needed cleaning, oiling and adjustment.
And then ... I took the main step in the life of most collectors today - "crossing the Rubicon", so to say: I typed "calculator" in the search box on ebay.
From there on the collection has only grown, until it is now well over 150 machines, and I need to be very selective in what I buy because of space limitations.
This is a website for showing my collection of antique calculators, and the stories associated with some of the machines.
The list of machines, all of which are clickable and have pictures, is now complete, and should be updated only with changes in the collection - which are relatively frequent.
Enjoy!
Also visit the virtual BRUNSVIGA Expo,a 2008 exhibition in the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum, which lives on here in fully digital form.
Also visit the exhibition on 400 years of mechanical calculation,currently at the Groenenborger campus of the University of Antwerp, and the virtual catalog is linked here.
