Calculator card, "grease" to "clean" wool conversion, 1953
date: label: Date made
content: 1953
name: label: maker
content: Fred Whitaker Company
label: distributor
content: Fred Whitaker Company
notes: label: Description
content: Calculator card, circular with two grommeted wheels. Printed, "FRED WHITAKER / COMPANY...". Card used "To convert cents grease to cents clean" and "To convert pence to cents".Philadelphia, 1953. Woolen mill or scouring mill tool, used to determine cost of clean wool when cost of grease wool is known.
label: Description
content: ATHM # 1992.3.29; Gift of Curtis C. Allen
label: Description
content: Textile production was a complicated business, involving hundreds of machines, and thousands of calculations, many of which had to be conducted by the weaver or loom-fixer in a few seconds of down-time to keep production moving and prevent losses from damaged goods. As the machinery grew more and more complex during the 20th century, and workers supervised more and more machines, these calculator cards provided assistance with complex calculations essential to efficient production – until the machinery was, by and large, replaced by computer-controlled equipment, in which adjustments were made in a central location. The NMAH array of calculator cards illustrates a sampling of the categories of computations that mill workers made daily, from fiber to finished cloth. They provide important context about the labor involved in running the machines they relate to.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: distributor
content: United States: Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Textiles
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: American Textile History Museum Collection
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2017.0232.24
label: catalog number
content: 2017.0232.24
label: accession number
content: 2017.0232
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Calculator card
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: plastic (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: metal (overall material)