Brunsviga is a calculating machine company whose history goes back to 1892 with devices upgrading from mechanical to electrical thereafter. The firm Grimme & Natalis that manufactured the machines changed their name to Brunsviga Maschinenwerke A.G. in 1927.
The Brusvinga device finds its roots in the arithmometer developed by Willgodt Theophil Odhner (1845–1905), [1] [2] a Swedish engineer who emigrated to Russia for work purposes in 1868 or 1869 after having studied mechanics at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Odhner was hired by his fellow Swede Ludvig Nobel (Albert Nobel's brother) who was the head of an arms factory. [2] His job there was to fix the so-called Thomas Arithmometers, named after their designer in the 1820s. The term arithmometer covered mechanical calculating devices that were able to perform all the four arithmetic operations. Odhner improved and simplified the expensive devices by implementing a different transmission system. [3] [4]
In 1878, as he tried to expand his business, Odhner partnered with Karl Königsberger, a commercial advisor and merchant in the guild of Saint-Petersburg. The latter filed patents in numerous countries including Germany with the German patent n° 7393.11 on November 19th 1878. [5] In 1892, one of the top executives of the German's sewing machine firm Grimme & Natalis bought Odhner's patent for his device. [5] His intention was to use the same production tools for both sewing and calculating machines. The patent included distribution rights in Germany, Belgium and Switzerland [5] and the calculating machines were launched under the brand's name "Brunsviga", in reference to the city of Braunschweig, where the firm Grimme & Natalis was based.
The first device, the "A" type, was launched in July 1892 under the name Brunsviga [5] and resembled Odhner's devices. Multiple modifications to its design as well as capabilities were made afterwards by the engineer Franz Trinks, who was then head executive of Brunsvinga. In the twenty years to follow, 89 German patents and 152 of other countries' were filed based on his inventions. [1] Some machines were now able to perform simultaneously multiple operations (not more than three), as did the Trinks-Triplex, [6] launched shortly before World War I whose 19 typing levers could display results as long as 20 numbers.
The launch of the Brunsviga Novas [7] occurred around 1925, the same year as that of the Brunsviga 13. In 1929, Franz Trinks developed his last model, the Brunsviga Dupla, [8] which happened to be electrical. He died in 1931.
In 1952 60 years after the first model, 60 different types were available on the market and the firm accounted for 265.000 sales. [5]
In 1952, Brunsviga Maschinenwerke AG employed a thousand people. Between 1926 and 1930, after launching Nova and type 13, 40,000 devices were produced equalling the production in numbers of nearly 30 years between 1892 and 1921. [3] According to Peter Faulstich [5] in his article, the name Brunsviga was used for fifty years to refer to calculating machines.
In 1872, in a specialized journal, the conditions for calculating machines to meet market needs were written as follows: "If a reliable calculating machine could be manufactured to retail at a low price, say five dollars, with which addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division could be done, it would no doubt find a ready- sale, as all go-ahead business men want such a time-saver . . ." [9] By streamlining their production under the guidance of Herman Hoffmeister (1886–1930), Brunsviga was able to support mass production at reasonable cost of devices meeting market needs. [3] The company also worked on reducing the weight and dimensions of their final product to facilitate the dispatch by launching miniature series (A,B and J) or other compact models such as the Brunsviga 13, allowing them as well to reduce selling prices. [3] Simultaneously, in the early 1920s, numerous sectors such as Insurance companies, Statistics, Geodesy, Astronomy or Engineering [3] implemented the use of the calculating machine into their calculation processes. Even more broadly, every sector with a requirement for precise calculation processes found itself in need of calculating machines. The brutal population growth and even bigger demands in the matter of economical calculation required such calculations to be done quickly and at rational costs. [5]
The market penetration of the brand was accompanied by the filing of numerous patents. Before 1915, Germany alone accounted for more than a hundred patents, and 200 others were filed internationally. In 1906, Brunsviga's sales agents were based in London, Paris, Stockholm, Conception, Buenos Aires, São Paulo and Johannesburg. The company now had branch offices in the Netherlands and in Denmark. [3] . In 1931, adding to the 30 offices in Germany, 90 more opened their doors in foreign countries [3]
In 1909, the company introduced the tagline "the brain of steel" alongside an illustration from fellow Brunswick native mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. In the late 1920s, the graphist Günther Clausen (1885–1954) chose to modify the drawing of the head, and the tagline read "calculate everything". [3]
Alongside marketing strategies, the firm made use of specialized magazines [10] as well as the press to promote the use of calculating machines: the Manchester Guardian for instance, showed an image of a worker with his Brunsviga. [11] Artists too were sought to publish in the monthly company magazine. For the twenty year's anniversary of Brunsviga in 1912, a brochure was published under the title When calculating machines have a heart, whose author, Fritz Müller later republished it as a short story. [12] The painter and graphist from Brunswick, Karl Bock (1873–1940), created the cover of the brochure while Austrian artist August Mandlick (1860–1934) took care of the illustrations [3] . Lastly, the writer Abraham Halberthal (1881–1969), under the pseudonym A. Halbert, published short stories in the company monthly magazine to present the calculating machine. [3]
Many scientists worked with the Brunsviga. Amongst them, Enrico Fermi used it at the very beginning of his work on nuclear chain reaction, [13] also Karl Pearson, [14] Stephen Wilson' [15] and Sydney Holt. [16] Some Brunsviga machines can also be found in museums such as the model C at the Smithsonian.[ citation needed ] The Henri Poincaré Institute also owns one.[ citation needed ]
In 1959, the company Olympia Werke took full control of Brunsviga Maschinenwerke AG. Shortly after, in 1962, most of the existing models (11S, 11E, 16E, 13BR, 18 RK, D 18 R, D13 R/1 D13 R2) saw their production stopped. The only ones remaining on the market up until 1963 were the 13RK, B20 and B183. The 13RM from the old range remained available up until 1964. The RT4 (1970–1971), which was made in Spain, was the last device launched by Olympia, but as a limited edition numbering only around 1500 copies. [17] In 1972, Olympia stopped for good the production of mechanical calculating devices.
An electronic calculator is typically a portable electronic device used to perform calculations, ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics.
A difference engine is an automatic mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions. It was designed in the 1820s, and was first created by Charles Babbage. The name difference engine is derived from the method of divided differences, a way to interpolate or tabulate functions by using a small set of polynomial co-efficients. Some of the most common mathematical functions used in engineering, science and navigation are built from logarithmic and trigonometric functions, which can be approximated by polynomials, so a difference engine can compute many useful tables.
William Seward Burroughs I was an American inventor born in Rochester, New York.
An adding machine is a class of mechanical calculator, usually specialized for bookkeeping calculations. In the United States, the earliest adding machines were usually built to read in dollars and cents. Adding machines were ubiquitous office equipment until they were phased out in favor of calculators in the 1970s and by personal computers beginning in about 1985. The older adding machines were rarely seen in American office settings by the year 2000.
The Curta is a hand-held mechanical calculator designed by Curt Herzstark. It is known for its extremely compact design: a small cylinder that fits in the palm of the hand. It was affectionately known as the "pepper grinder" or "peppermill" due to its shape and means of operation; its superficial resemblance to a certain type of hand grenade also earned it the nickname "math grenade".
The Comptometer was the first commercially successful key-driven mechanical calculator, patented in the United States by Dorr Felt in 1887.
A mechanical calculator, or calculating machine, is a mechanical device used to perform the basic operations of arithmetic automatically, or (historically) a simulation such as an analog computer or a slide rule. Most mechanical calculators were comparable in size to small desktop computers and have been rendered obsolete by the advent of the electronic calculator and the digital computer.
Boris Caesar Wilhelm Hagelin was a Swedish businessman and inventor of encryption machines.
The arithmometer was the first digital mechanical calculator strong enough and reliable enough to be used daily in an office environment. This calculator could add and subtract two numbers directly and could perform long multiplications and divisions effectively by using a movable accumulator for the result.
Willgodt Theophil Odhner was a Swedish engineer and entrepreneur, working in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was the inventor of the Odhner Arithmometer, which by the 1940s was one of the most popular type of portable mechanical calculator in the world.
A pinwheel calculator is a class of mechanical calculator described as early as 1685, and popular in the 19th and 20th century, calculating via wheels whose number of teeth were adjustable. These wheels, also called pinwheels, could be set by using a side lever which could expose anywhere from 0 to 9 teeth, and therefore when coupled to a counter they could, at each rotation, add a number from 0 to 9 to the result. By linking these wheels with carry mechanisms a new kind of calculator engine was invented. Turn the wheels one way and one performs an addition, the other way a subtraction.
The stepped reckoner or Leibniz calculator was a mechanical calculator invented by the German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz around 1672 and completed in 1694. The name comes from the translation of the German term for its operating mechanism, Staffelwalze, meaning "stepped drum". It was the first calculator that could perform all four basic arithmetic operations.
Frank Stephen Baldwin was an American who invented a pinwheel calculator in 1875. He started the design of a new machine in 1905 and was able to finalize its design with the help of Jay R. Monroe who eventually bought the exclusive rights to the machine and started the Monroe Calculating Machine Company to manufacture it.
A mechanical computer is a computer built from mechanical components such as levers and gears rather than electronic components. The most common examples are adding machines and mechanical counters, which use the turning of gears to increment output displays. More complex examples could carry out multiplication and division—Friden used a moving head which paused at each column—and even differential analysis. One model, the Ascota 170 accounting machine sold in the 1960s, calculated square roots.
Ryōichi Yazu was a Japanese inventor. He is best known for his invention of Japan's first mechanical calculator.
A Leibniz wheel or stepped drum is a cylinder with a set of teeth of incremental lengths which, when coupled to a counting wheel, can be used in the calculating engine of a class of mechanical calculators. Invented by Leibniz in 1673, it was used for three centuries until the advent of the electronic calculator in the mid-1970s.
The Millionaire was the first commercially successful mechanical calculator that could perform a direct multiplication. It was in production from 1893 to 1935 with a total of about five thousand machines manufactured.
The Odhner Arithmometer was a very successful pinwheel calculator invented in Russia in 1873 by W. T. Odhner, a Swedish immigrant. Its industrial production officially started in 1890 in Odhner's Saint Petersburg workshop. Even though the machine was very popular, the production only lasted thirty years until the factory was nationalised and closed down during the Russian revolution of 1917.
Olympia-Werke AG was an important German manufacturer of typewriters. Since the plant in Roffhausen near Wilhelmshaven was closed in 1991, only the brand name has survived.