Antique Mechanical Calculators

Ancient calculators

In the abacus, the slide rule and other inventions is the origin of calculators. The definitive overcoming of the abacus begins in the 17th century. In the early 19th century, Charles Xavier Thomas of Colmar invented the arithmometer based on the inventions of Pascal and Leibniz. In the 17th century, Pascal had invented a calculator called the pascaline and Leibniz had created a mechanism of mechanical calculator that was called the arithmometer.

The arithmometer

Perfected by industry in successive models, the arithmometer, reached full force in the 19th century and its use declined in the first half of the 20th. This metal mechanism inside a wooden or aluminum case is robust, beautiful, scarce and in demand. A benchmark in the industry that currently honors any collection is the Odhner arithmometer, invented in Russia in 1874 by Willgodt Theophil Odhner. The Felix calculator is related to the Odhner. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Odhner's descendants emigrated to Switzerland and the Russian state nationalized Odher's arithmometer. In 1924, Felix Dherzhinsikye, creator of the Cheka, which later evolved into the KGB, used Odhner's design to manufacture calculators in Moscow until 1978.

The comptometer and other antique calculating machines

The comptometer and comptograph competed with the arithmometer from the late 19th century and outlived it until the 1970s. They operate with keys, instead of the windlass that drives the arithmometer mechanism. They are faster, lighter and smaller. In wooden, metal or aluminum cases, mechanical or electric, they are practical, compact and elegant. Introduced in 1948, the Curta is a variant of the arithmometer appreciated by lovers of antique calculating machines. Invented by Curt Herzstark, a prisoner of the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald, this portable mechanical calculator tests the power of will and creativity. The dramatic circumstances in which it was created perhaps explain its beautiful hermeticism. Among the rarest in this section, it is not surprising that collectors covet it.

The makers of antique calculators

The Germans excel in the manufacture of antique calculating machines. Outstanding among them are Brunsviga, so called because it operated, between 1892 and the 1960s, in the German city of Braunschweig; Thales, which manufactured between 1911 and the late 1960s; Triumphator, which, founded in 1900, operated until 1965; Lipsia, which made calculators between 1914 and 1954; and the Mercedes-Euklid brand, which opened in the early 20th century and from 1945 turned to electric calculator technology. Other manufacturers were the American Burroughs and, in Russia, Odhner.

The mechanical calculator as a collectible antique

Beginning in the 1970s, electronic calculators displaced mechanical calculators. Because they are mechanical and because of their incredible quality, antique calculators are still useful. And above all, they are collector's items noted for their majesty, beauty and historical value.