Tate's Arithmometer
date: label: date made
content: ca 1900
name: label: maker
content: C. & E. Layton
notes: label: Description
content: This stepped drum manual non-printing calculating machine is of English manufacture. It represents an improvement of the arithmometer invented by the Frenchman Charles Xavier Thomas in the 1820s and sold successfully from the middle of the 19th century. In 1879 the Prudential Assurance Company challenged English makers to produce a more reliable machine than that of Thomas. The firm of Elliott Brothers made some twenty such machines, and won the premium offered. The engineer Samuel Tate of Clerkenwell Close in Middlesex County also set out to make a simpler, faster, sturdier, and more accurate arithmometer. Tate filed for a British patent in 1881, and received it in 1884.
label: Description
content: Charles and Edwin Layton, London publishers of works on insurance, annuities and mathematics, sold Tate’s arithmometer. They exhibited it at the International Inventions Exhibition held in London in 1885, and manufactured it, with improvements, at least until the time of World War I.
label: Description
content: The machine has a brass top and metal mechanism that fits tightly in a wooden case. It has eight levers for setting digits, and an ADD MULT / SUB DIV lever to the left of these levers. It has no windows for showing the number set up. The operating crank is on the right.
label: Description
content: Behind the levers is a movable carriage with a row of nine windows for the revolution register and a row of 16 windows for the result register. The right side of the carriage has a zeroing crank for these registers. A handle for lifting the carriage is toward its left. Five brass decimal markers fit in holes between the levers and between the windows. Thumbscrews for setting numbers in the revolution and result registers are between the registers. The stepped drums are of brass. The compartment in the case to the left of the machine has no cover. Handles at both ends of the case make it easier to lift the machine.
label: Description
content: A mark to the left of the levers on the front reads: TATE’S (/) ARITHMOMETER (/) C. & E. LAYTON (/) LONDON. The inside of the machine below the carriage on the left side is engraved: 8.15.
label: Description
content: This example comes from the collection of Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Company of Chicago.
label: Description
content: Compare MA.311,953, MA.323657, MA.323629, and MA.333922.
label: Description
content: References:
label: Description
content: Horsburgh, E. M., ed., <I> Handbook of the Napier Tercentenary Celebration of Modern Instruments and Methods of Calculation</I>, Edinburgh: G. Bell & Sons, 1914, pp. 102–104.
label: Description
content: Stephen Johnson, “Making the Arithmometer Count,” <I>Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society</I> 52 (1997), pp.12–21.
label: Description
content: Samuel Tate, “Improvements in Calculating Machines or Arithmometers,” U.K. Patent #65 for 1884. The provisional specification for this patent is dated March 29, 1881.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United Kingdom: England, London
topic: label: Subject
content: Mathematics
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Mathematics
label: See more items in
content: Calculating Machines
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content: Science & Mathematics
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Victor Comptometer Corporation
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: MA.323629
label: catalog number
content: 323629
label: accession number
content: 250163
label: maker number
content: not found -
objectType: label: Object Name
content: calculating machine
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: brass (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: wood (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 16.7 cm x 63.5 cm x 20 cm; 6 9/16 in x 25 in x 7 7/8 in