Part 26

Babbage began to design his “analytical engine” in 1833 and he put together a small portion of it shortly before his death in 1871. This engine was to be capable of evaluating any algebraic formula. The formula it is desired to evaluate would be communicated to the engine by two sets of perforated cards similar to those used in the Jacquard loom. These cards would cause the engine automatically to operate on the numerical data placed in it, in such a way as to produce the correct result. Notwithstanding its simple action, its structure is complicated by a large amount of adding mechanism. A complete set of adding wheels with carrying gear being required for the tabular number, and every order of difference except the highest order.

After Babbage, there was much experimenting done by inventors to produce a real adding and listing machine. Also inspired by Babbage’s work Scheutz of Stockholm made a “difference engine,” which was exhibited in England in 1864, and subsequently acquired for Dudley Observatory, Albany, N. Y. Scheutz’s engine had mechanism for calculating with four orders of differences of sixteen figures each.

As far as we know the first patent in this country issued by the patent office for a calculating machine was to O. L. Castle of Alton, Illinois, in 1850. It was for a ten-key adding machine which did not print and only added in one column.

Work on Some of the Present-Day Models.

Frank S. Baldwin, a construction engineer, living in the United States, began to work on calculating machines in 1870. In 1874 he received a patent for a small hand adding machine. In 1875 a patent was granted him on a calculating machine. This machine was along entirely original lines. Mr. Baldwin did not even know of the existence of the Thomas machine at that time. The machine had a number of important advantages over the Thomas system. Scientists were very much interested in the invention at the time, and the John Scott medal for meritorious inventions was conferred upon Mr. Baldwin by the Franklin Institute. The only other invention being honored in that year (1875) was the George Westinghouse air brake.

This calculating machine, however, seemed to be too much in advance of the times, and Mr. Baldwin was unable to interest capital in it. He was very successful in his business as construction engineer and continued to spend all his spare time and money in experimental work. He brought out a number of models at later dates with important improvements.

In the early eighties one of Mr. Baldwin’s 1875 models found its way to Europe into the hands of one Ohdner, a Swede. He took out patents in all European countries on a machine that did not vary in any important particular from Mr. Baldwin’s machine, and several large manufacturing companies in Europe took it up. It is now appearing under ten to fifteen different names in Europe, the most important being “Brunsviga” and Triumphator in Germany. There is no essential difference between the machines they are turning out today and Mr. Baldwin’s original machine. More than 50,000 machines of this type have been sold throughout the world.

In 1883 a young man who started to work in a bank in Auburn, N. Y., discovered that nine-tenths of his work was mechanical addition. He also found that the human brain is but an imperfect tool, incapable of sustained effort without accident. His health gave way under the strain, and he quit the bank to begin work in a machine shop in St. Louis.

This was William S. Burroughs. He was of mechanical turn of mind, with an intense hobby for painful accuracy. By lamplight at home he worked out pencil outlines of a machine which would write figures and at the same time add them. It required the most painstaking work for him to make a machine to do what he had in mind. His early associates say of Burroughs that no ordinary materials were good enough for his creation. His drawings were on metal plates that would not stretch nor shrink by the fraction of a hair. He worked with hardened tools ground to a point, and when he struck a center or drew a line, he did it under a microscope.

In 1884 Burroughs took his plans to a St. Louis dry goods merchant, who thought so well of the idea that he raised $700 toward forming a company. The young man took up his work in the machine shop conducted by Joseph Boyer.

It was in January, 1885, that he applied for his patent, which was not issued until 1887.

His mechanism throughout operated on the pivotal principle. This means a minimum of friction, therefore the least wear on the machine and the least exertion on the part of the operator. The principle elements in the machine remain practically unchanged today, a fact which testifies to the excellence of the inventor’s work.

Experimenting on the machine swallowed a great deal of capital, and the stockholders of the company he had formed became impatient. Burroughs objected strenuously, for he did not wish to market the machine until he was convinced that it was perfect, but he finally agreed to manufacture fifty machines.

In his public demonstrations, he could do wonders with the machine. The public was skeptical, however, and some averred that he was a “lightning calculator” who did sums in his head and printed them on the machine. The first machines worked all right for the inventor, but inexperienced operators obtained surprising results through punching the keys and jerking the crank.

To meet this trouble and make the machines “fool proof,” he invented the “automatic control” in 1890. This was a governor, called the “dash pot”--a small cylinder partially filled with oil, and in which was a plunger. This, in connection with an ingenious management of springs, absorbed the shocks and governed the machine so that no matter what was done to it, it would operate only at a certain speed. It is this same shock-absorbing device which is used to catch the recoil on the immense siege guns used in modern warfare.

Other improvements were made, and in 1891 the first hundred machines that were really marketable were manufactured. While still flushed with his success, Burroughs thought of the first fifty machines which had proved such a disappointment. These machines still remained in a dusty storeroom to mock him. Determined to get them out of his sight and memory, he seized them and threw them one by one from a window to the pavement below.

When he had disposed of the last one, he called Mr. Boyer to see the ruin. “There,” he exclaimed, “I have ended the last of my troubles.”

The first machines were called “Registering Accountants,” and “Arithmometers.” Burroughs lived to see the fulfilment of his dreams and the machine a commercial success. He died September 14, 1898, at his country home in Citronelle, Alabama, a victim of tuberculosis.

There were at that time 8,000 banks in the country, and it was Burroughs’ idea that as soon as these were supplied the market for adding machines would be exhausted. Today, there are more than 200,000 adding machines of that one make in use.

The need for an all-around office assistant that could multiply, divide, subtract as easily as it could add, was an idea nourished in the mind and thought of a young student of the University of Michigan.

After graduation, Jay R. Monroe turned his attention to clerical and commercial lines. He became acquainted with all the different types of adding and so-called calculating machines. He saw their limitations and restrictions. He saw the need for versatility--for more simplicity in operation--for getting away from arbitrary rules--for release from the sapping mental tax.

So in 1911 Monroe met Mr. Baldwin. Mr. Monroe realized the possibilities of Mr. Baldwin’s idea. Together they set about designing the machine to make it as nearly perfect as possible in adaptation to the needs of modern business.

They produced a machine in which the best of the European features are said to be combined with the operating ease and simplicity of American-made machines. Provision is made for the correction of errors, and operation is in two directions, forward for addition and multiplication, and backward for subtraction and division. The latest model is a desk machine, occupying less than one square foot of space and weighing about twenty-six pounds.

One of the latest developments of the adding machine is a type that will post ledgers and statements. This machine is said to be the final step in relieving bookkeeping of its drudgery.

How Big is the Largest Adding Machine in the World?

The largest adding machine ever made was produced in 1915 and has a capacity of forty columns, or within one unit of ten duodecillions. This is a number too prodigious for the mind of man to grasp. This machine was exhibited at the Panama Expositions in 1915.

To get an idea of the capacity of this machine, suppose that your income is $1,000,000 a second. At this rate for twenty-four hours a day, with no stops for eating or sleeping, it would take you 352,331,022,041,828,731,333,333,333 years to accumulate a duodecillion dollars. All the hairs on the heads of all human beings, which are supposed to be numberless, are only a small fraction of a duodecillion.

This machine has a practical use in adding several sums simultaneously, and takes the place of from ten to a dozen smaller machines.

Adding machines are made that figure in English pence, shillings and pounds; in Japanese yen, and in the monetary system of most civilized countries. They will change inches into feet, pounds into bushels, and do other “stunts” that would make the average schoolboy envious when it comes to arithmetic.

The most complicated problems of multiplication, division and fractions may be handled with ease on these machines. They have taken a great part in the day’s work of modern business, and it would be hard to imagine how the world’s finance and industry could be handled without them. Adding and calculating machines have become almost as necessary in modern business as the telephone and the typewriter.

How are Adding Machines Used?

Adding machines may be found at work in all kinds of business places from corner groceries to department stores and manufacturing plants. In the various offices and plants of the Western Electric Company, which are scattered through the country, more than 1,600 machines are in use. Other big users are railroads, banks, mail-order houses, and city, state and government offices.

The Bank of France, the Bank of England, and other of the world’s largest financial institutions do the burden of their figure work on adding machines made in the United States. The German post-office uses more than 1,200 machines. There are individual American banks, like the Corn Exchange National Bank of New York, that employ as many as 150 adding machines in their work.

Some surprising uses are found for adding machines. One is used in a Japanese boarding house in California; another is used by a retired Dayton millionaire to count the coupons he clips; the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission uses a machine in fighting the hook-worm; the United States government uses thousands in making census tabulations and in other ways. Others are used by newsboys, egg farmers, housewives, undertakers, dentists, judges in automobile races, and by persons in a thousand different lines of business. Without adding machines the public would be obliged to wait for days for the results of most elections.

In this way, the idea of a tired bank clerk came to change the figuring methods of the world.

* * * * *

The words “Almighty Dollar” have been generally adopted since Irving first used them in his “Creole Village,” and the use of “lynching” to represent mob law and the action of mobs has become common since a Virginia farmer by that name instituted the first vigilance committee in America.

Where does Ermine Come From?

The ermine fur, with which we are all familiar, is furnished by the stoat, a small animal of the weasel tribe. It is found over both temperate Europe and North America, but is common only in the north.

Because of that change which occurs in the color of its fur at different seasons--by far most marked in the Arctic regions--it is not generally known that the ermine and stoat are the same. In winter, in cold countries or severe seasons, the fur changes from a reddish-brown to a yellowish-white, or almost pure white, under which shade the animal is recognized as the ermine. In both states the tip of the tail is black.

Like many other species of this genus, the ermine has the faculty of ejecting a fluid of a musky odor.

Its fur is short, soft and silky; the best skins being brought from Russia, Sweden and Norway and Hudson Bay territories. Its fur was formerly one of the insignia of royalty, and is still used by judges. When used as linings of cloaks the black tuft from the tail is sewed to the skin at irregular distances.

What is the Principle of “Foreign Exchange”?

Exchange, in commerce, is a transaction by which the debts of people residing at a distance are canceled by a draft or bill of exchange, without transfer of any actual money.

A merchant in New York who owes $1,000 worth of goods in London, gives a bill or order for that amount which can be negotiated through banking agencies or otherwise against similar debts owing by other parties in London who have payments to make in New York. This obviates the expense and risk of transmitting money.

The process of liquidating obligations between different nations is carried on in the same way by an exchange of foreign bills. When all the accounts of one country correspond in value with those of another, the exchange between the countries will be at par, that is, the sum for which the bill is drawn in the one country will be the exact value of it in the other.

Exchange is said to be at par when, for instance, a bill drawn in New York for the payment of $1,000 in London can be purchased there for $1,000. If it can be purchased for less, exchange is under par and is against London. If the purchaser is obliged to give more, exchange is above par and in favor of London.

Although the thousand circumstances which incessantly affect the state of debt and credit prevent the ordinary course of exchange from being almost ever precisely at par, its fluctuations are confined within narrow limits, and if direct exchange is unfavorable between two countries this can often be obviated by the interposition of bills drawn on other countries where an opposite state of matters prevails.

What do We Mean by “The Old Moon in the New Moon’s Arms”?

“Earth-shine,” in astronomy, is the name given to the faint light visible on the part of the moon not illuminated by the sun, due to the illumination of that portion by the light which the earth reflects on her. It is most conspicuous when the illuminated part of the disc is at its smallest, as soon after new moon. This phenomenon is popularly described as “the old moon in the new moon’s arms.”

The Story in a Bowling Alley[27]

From the “stone age” onward the probabilities are that man has always had some kind of bowling game.

Bowling, as we know today, is an indoor adaptation of, and an improvement upon, the old Dutch game of “nine-pins.” This game was brought from Holland by those colonists who settled Manhattan Island in 1623.

Washington Irving, in his story, “Rip Van Winkle,” refers to the old Dutch fairy tale, that the rolling thunder on the mountain tops of the Catskill was the noise made by the rolling balls as the elfs and gnomes engaged in their favorite pastimes of bowling.

That little section of New York City known as Bowling Green is the original spot which, in 1732, Peter Bayard, Peter Jay and John Chambers leased for eleven years and enclosed for a bowling green.

With the influx of German immigrants, who brought with them a game similar to the Dutch game, additional popularity was given to the sport.

The game was originally played on the bare ground. The Germans used a board about a foot wide on which to roll the ball, and then improved on this by using cohesive mineral substances solidly packed together. At an early date, the Dutch had covered the alley with a roof, and later enclosed it in a rough shed, to protect it and make play possible in any kind of weather. But, great as these improvements were over the crudeness of previous centuries, they are not worthy of comparison with a modern bowling academy.

In the best hard-wood section of the United States, one of the large bowling equipment manufacturers owns about thirty thousand acres of maple. From this raw material is gathered the chief stock that goes into bowling alleys and the pins.

The company has its own logging crews that cut the timber and pile it on flat cars, whence it is transported over a private railroad until it arrives at the company sawmills. Here the raw material enters upon the manufacturing process.

The rough stock-strips for the alley “bed,” “leveling strips,” “return chute,” “post” and “kick-backs” are sawed out of certain of the logs. They are then shipped to a factory where they are seasoned, being kiln dried. The stock is next cut to the required sizes.

The bed stock is cut into strips, planed on all sides, and tongued and grooved on the widest sides. When finished, the strips measure 3 x 1 inch. Part of the bed stock, however, is hard pine, shipped from the Southern states in the rough boards. This is finished similar to the maple strips.

The “kick-backs” are the two partitions, shaped somewhat like a ship’s rudder, which form the two pit sides. Each consists of two facings of the best maple with a core of hard but resilient wood in the middle. They are built in this way to make the pins that fly side-wise spring back on the bed and knock down other standing pins, and also to withstand the exceedingly rough usage to which they are subject by the flying pins and rolling balls.

The cushion forms the rear end of the pit. The frame is stoutly constructed, and the face thickly upholstered with scrap leather and a heavy but pliable covering. It swings on hinges which suspend it from the cross bar, running from each of the kick-backs across the pit end at the top. The cushion diminishes the force of the rolling balls and flying pins, permitting them to fall gently into the pit.

The “gutters” are the concave boards that extend the complete length of the alley, from the foul line to the pit, on both sides of the bed. The purpose is to take care of the misdirected balls that roll off the bed before reaching the pit.

The “return chute,” or “loop-the-loop return,” is the railway along which the balls travel in their return from the pit to the bowler. It is usually placed on the right-hand side of the alley, or between a pair of alleys.

At the pit end, the chute is solidly constructed with a concave flanged surface placed on the top of the kick-back. It conforms to the downward curve of the latter, but the rail work begins at the top of the incline and extends back to the newel post at the bowler’s end of the alley. The flanges easily accommodate the balls when placed on the chute by the pin boy.

The newel post is not made of a solid block, but is built up, being veneered on the inside, as well as on the outside, to make it impervious to atmospheric changes. The top contains a sponge cup to moisten the fingers of the bowler.

The rails form a semicircle at the post, with the ends of the arc pointing down the alley. A tightly stretched leather strap extends horizontally from the upper end of the arc back to the post, where it is fastened with a swivel screw. Half way up, from the points of the arc, a second rail, _i. e._, the “receiver,” is built, with sufficient space between it and the strap to allow the passage of the largest size ball. With the momentum gained by rolling down the incline of the kick-back, the ball rolls back on the inside of the curve until it strikes the strap, where its course is stopped, and it drops on the receiver, ready again for use by the bowler.

In beginning the construction of an alley, the mechanic lays the leveling strips on which the bed is to rest. These are set at right angles to the direction in which the bed is to lie, and must be spirit-leveled for accuracy, and firmly fastened to the foundation. A strip of cork carpet is then laid the full width of the alley and extending the entire length of the bed. This is to reduce to a minimum the sound of the balls dropping on and rolling down the bed.

On the leveling strips at the extreme side of where the bed is to lie, a 3 x 1-inch maple strip is laid, widest side downward, with its finished one-inch edge nearest to the gutter. One end of this strip marks the extreme end of the approach. The other end of the strip is continued by adding other strips the full length of the bed. When these have been carefully squared to the exact direction the alley is to run, they are fastened to the leveling strips.

The next strip, also of maple, is tongued into the lower one, but its continuous length extends only about five feet beyond the foul line, or about eighteen feet from the approach end.

A bowling bed cannot be laid as an ordinary floor. It is built upon its side and when finished resembles a wooden wall about seventy-five feet long four inches high and three inches wide.

The approach end of the bed, approximately eighteen feet long, is constructed of maple, with each alternate strip of the 3 x 1-inch bed stock about eighteen inches shorter. The pit end of the bed is similarly constructed for a distance of about six feet. The space between is filled in with the pine strips of the same dimensions, and the alternate long and short strips at the inner ends of the approach and pit ends form mortices into which the pine dovetails.

The wear on the bed occurs where the bowler walks and drops the ball and where the ball strikes the pins; hence the hard maple. The interior is filled with pine, which is softer, because it retains a higher polish and prevents the rolling ball from bumping; thus throwing it from its proper course.