page_title: Adding machine
section_title: Burroughs's calculating machine
hierarchical_section_title: Adding machine / Burroughs's calculating machine
caption_attribution_description: English: Drawing for a Calculating Machine, 08/21/1888. This is the printed patent drawing for a calculating machine invented by William S. Burroughs. From the National Archives.
context_page_description: 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.
  Blaise Pascal and Wilhelm Schickard were the two original inventors of the mechanical calculator in 1642. For Pascal this was an adding machine that could perform additions and subtractions directly and multiplication and divisions by repetitions, whilst Schickard's machine, invented several decades earlier was less functionally efficient but was supported by a mechanised form of multiplication tables. These two were followed by a string of inventors and inventions leading to those of Thomas de Colmar who launched the mechanical calculator industry in 1851 when he released his simplified arithmometer. However, they did not gain widespread use until Dorr E.
context_section_description: William Seward Burroughs received a patent for his adding machine on August 25, 1888. He was a founder of American Arithmometer Company, which became Burroughs Corporation and  evolved to produce electronic billing machines and mainframes, and eventually merged with Sperry to form Unisys. The grandson of the inventor of the adding machine is Beat author William S. Burroughs; a collection of his essays is called The Adding Machine.
caption: Patent drawing for Burroughs's calculating machine, 1888.
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