William S. Burroughs, an ex-bank clerk from St Louis, produced the first adding/listing machine and filed for a patent at almost the exact time that Felt had finished his prototype "macaroni box" Comptometer, January of 1885. For the next 15 years, a battle would rage between the businesses created by these similar but, fundamentally different, designs.
For an in-depth look at the development of the adding machine, be sure to check out James Redin's incisive analysis and Michael Hancock's historic reveiw at the Dotpoint website.
The first battle in this long-fought war commensed immediately and ended around 1902-3 when Felt appears to have finally given up trying to build a practical lister based on his key-driven design. Reading the available material has convinced this author that this effort was a tragic waste of Felt's design talents.
As Edwin Darby observed...
| "On June 11, 1889, Felt was issued a patent for his second machine, the Comptograph. which was a listing machine. The Comptometer was not and is not a recording or listing machine; answers showed on window dials to be read off and entered into journals and other business papers. But the competing Burroughs machines did have a printout. The first Comptographs were not particularly successful in that, although they were key-driven, a second and cumbersome lever motion was necessary to actuate the printing unit. Later Felt switched to the key-set, two-motion system for his Comptograph and the machine had good sales, particularly in Europe." |
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"Increasingly, the Felt & Tarrant partnership became an uneasy one. The older Tarrant was cautious while Felt, a combination dreamer and hardheaded businessman, was full steam ahead. Finally in 1902 they agreed to go their separate ways-almost. Tarrant would take the Comptograph and Felt would take the Comptometer.
"Two companies were formed where each man would control one and participate in the profits of both. Felt got 51 percent of Felt & Tarrant while Tarrant would control a like percentage of the Comptograph Co. This arrangement worked well until World War I killed off the main source of Comptograph revenues, the sales in Europe. The Comptograph, its plant and assets, were reabsorbed by Felt & Tarrant and the business liquidated. Felt was uninterested in trying to revive the machine since it was cumbersome, very heavy and more expensive than the Comptometer and in need of a drastic redesign. Too, the competition was concentrating on the recording end of the business." |
The second battle covered a relatively brief but intense period around 1911-1914. Just as Felt & Tarrant perceived the adder/lister market as fair game, the powers-that-be at the Burroughs Corporation were well aware of the profitable niche that the Comptometer had captured.
F&T's original patents were expiring and while some improvements had been made since the original 1887 patent, most of Felt's design efforts had been directed toward the Comptograph. This was an opening that Burroughs would now seek to exploit at the expense of their arch-rival.
In early 1912, two patents were granted to Burroughs covering some unique enhancements to the expired Felt patents and providing the foundation for their line of calculators. Incredibly, it was decided to package the machine in a case of almost identical appearance to the Comptometer! One can only speculate that they expected or, at least hoped, to benefit from the reputation that Felt & Tarrant had earned in the market for key-driven calculators.
From Mary Elizabeth Schmidt (nee Koch, granddaughter of the inventor)...
| "I do know that there were problems with Burroughs right from the beginning. They often tried to use our name calling their machine the Burroughs Comptometer." |
While the details of the court case are not crystal clear, it would seem that the similarities in appearance were so striking and obvious that a favorable judgement was rendered forthwith. It is thot that Burroughs was ordered to recall and destroy all "shoebox" models, altho the mechanisms may have been salvaged.
With production halted (and a possible recall in process), a redesigned case with rounded corners and a flatter overall appearance was substituted. As it turned out, the case wasn't to matter much anyway as we shall see. So ended the second battle.
The final battle with Burroughs was to extend far beyond Felt's life and well into the second half of the 20th century. With the "case-case" behind them, Burroughs would now establish itself as F&T's primary competitor in the calculator market. Both of these workhorse backoffice calculators would eventually be displaced, first by tabulators and finally by the widespread use of computers. Felt & Tarrant morphed into the Comptometer Corporation only to be absorbed by the Victor Adding Machine Company in 1961 after failing to successfully diversify following WWII.
Burroughs continued as a dominant force in office machines having accumulated some 450 separate products as early as the mid 1930s. When the behemoth computers of the 1950s appeared, they moved aggressively into that field as well and was considered by many to have products far superior to their competitors. However, the market dominance by IBM in mainframe computers would lead Burroughs to merge with Sperry Rand as UNISYS Corp in 1986. But that's another story.
Our only sources of information are the American Digest of Business Machines and Martin. Apparantly the side mounted short-stroke clearing lever would zero both dial-sets, each of which was protected from external contaminants by a clear, full-width, curved plastic piece. In contrast, both the Comptometer and Burroughs machines had their plastic protectors mounted beneath apertures in the register cover.
Both Martin and McCarthy tell us that the upper set of dials was for the "last item set up on the keyboard" while a bar at the bottom of the keyboard is for clearing the "register dials only". Unfortunately, this last seems to be in error. We have it from Larry Wilheim who has two of these rarities...
| "...the bar across the bottom clears the individual item or top dial." |
In discussing this machine, Martin states flatly "the designer is J.A.V.Turck" who joined Felt & Tarrant at some point before 1913. How this competitor managed to stay in business well into the 1920s producing so few machines and without their original designer seems a mystery.
Victor was formed in 1918 around Oliver D. Johantgen's ideas for a new lightweight calculator. Carl Buehler, sole owner of a chain of some 100 midwestern meat markets, thinking he was buying a machine, instead ended up with $100 worth of stock and stormed into a shareholders' meeting to get his money back. Discovering that he was the only "deep-pockets" businessman present and becoming convinced of the value of Johantgen's design, he soon took control of the company with the approval of all.
But while Carl Buehler was a smart and successful businessman, he knew nothing about calculators or adding machines. His son Albert (later called A.C.) however, at 21 years of age, seemed just right for the job of running this new concern. The elder Buehler installed him as a V.P. and within a few years, A.C. was running the company as he would for the rest of his life.
But its the machine, not the company or its CEO that is of interest here. So, again we turn to Edwin Darby who describes the early design...
| "Johantgen and his associates had originally decided to build a simpler, less costly 'non-listing adding' machine. As the keys were depressed and the handle pulled, dials moved figures in front of a window much like a speedometer." |
So it would appear that this first model (the 110) was a "key-set" design requiring a handle pull for each entry. In effect, it was a "lister" without the listing equipment. Apparantly very few of these machines were ever sold and Victor moved swiftly into production of a lister model. Regrettably, it carried the same model number as the non-lister (110), thereby confusing future collectors forever.
A post-1930 note...
Johantgen died in April of 1932 and Victor hired Thomas O. Mehan (creator of the original Brennan machine) in March of 1938 to replace him.
No man to waste time, Mehan promptly designed the model 600, a lightweight, full keyboard machine that had no dial-wheel register, thereby eliminating about half the parts. The model 700 with its 10-key keyboard, however retained the register and still had only one third the parts of the older design! One wonders why the register on adding machines was retained for so many years after it no longer served a purpose.
Victor went on to establish a major presense in the low end of the adding machine market becoming a significant competitor for Burroughs but not Felt & Tarrant. Victor's merger with the remnants of the ailing Comptometer Corp. some 40 years later was an ironic twist for a company that was never a serious threat to the Comptometer.