Computers & Business Machines

Imagine the loss, 100 years from now, if museums hadn't begun preserving the artifacts of the computer age. The last few decades offer proof positive of why museums must collect continuously—to document technological and social transformations already underway.

The museum's collections contain mainframes, minicomputers, microcomputers, and handheld devices. Computers range from the pioneering ENIAC to microcomputers like the Altair and the Apple I. A Cray2 supercomputer is part of the collections, along with one of the towers of IBM's Deep Blue, the computer that defeated reigning champion Garry Kasparov in a chess match in 1997. Computer components and peripherals, games, software, manuals, and other documents are part of the collections. Some of the instruments of business include adding machines, calculators, typewriters, dictating machines, fax machines, cash registers, and photocopiers

The Portable No. 1 typewriter (also known as the Baby Fox) was produced by the Fox Typewriter Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan beginning in 1917. The typewriter carriage collapsed behind the body of the typewriter, becoming flat and easily portable.
Description
The Portable No. 1 typewriter (also known as the Baby Fox) was produced by the Fox Typewriter Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan beginning in 1917. The typewriter carriage collapsed behind the body of the typewriter, becoming flat and easily portable. The QWERTY keyboard has glass topped keys with a wooden space bar.
The Fox Typewriter Company was founded in 1902 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The company originally produced blind upstriking typewriters before producing a visible typewriter in 1906. World War I created a lack of materials that led many typewriter companies to cease manufacture during this time. The President of the Fox Typewriter Company, William R. Fox, returned to the Fox Machine Company in 1915, but a new Fox Typewriter Company was founded later in the year, buying the company’s patents and factory. The new Fox Typewriter Company produced the Fox portable in 1917 before declaring bankruptcy in 1921.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1917
ID Number
1985.0653.01
accession number
1985.0653
catalog number
1985.0653.01
accession number
1985.0653
Showing up for work punctually, at an official time, became expected behavior toward the end of the 19th century, as more and more people worked for others rather than for themselves. Not just the work force's punctuality was at issue.
Description
Showing up for work punctually, at an official time, became expected behavior toward the end of the 19th century, as more and more people worked for others rather than for themselves. Not just the work force's punctuality was at issue. Cost accounting and analysis--recording and scrutinizing expenses for labor, materials and overhead--were getting more attention than ever before. Time was money.
In the 1890s, timekeepers-- clerks who kept track of employees' hours in handwritten logs --found that machines were beginning to replace them, especially in workplaces with large numbers of employees. Thanks to the influence of the advocates of scientific management, nearly every industrial workplace had a time clock, after about 1910. So did many offices. By the early twentieth century the International Time Recording Company supplied an entire line of timekeeping devices, including master clocks, several types of time clocks, and time stamps. Founded in 1900, the firm continuously expanded its product line, underwent several reorganizations and name changes, and emerged in 1924 as the International Business Machine Corporation, familiar today as IBM.
One of the firm's most popular products was the dial time recorder, a clock that could furnish a daily or weekly record of up to 150 employees. Based on the 1888 patent of physician Alexander Dey, the dial time recorder was essentially a spring-driven clock with a cast-iron wheel affixed to its dial side. The rim of the wheel was perforated with numbered holes. As employees pressed a rotating pointer into the hole at their assigned number, the machine recorded the time on a preprinted sheet and rang a bell with each punch. A two-color ribbon printed all regular time in green and all tardiness, early departures, and overtime in red.
This International dial time recorder hung in a factory in the garment district of New York City.
Date made
ca 1912
manufacturer
IBM
ID Number
ME.336750
catalog number
336750
accession number
1978.2237
This cash register has a wooden frame covered with brass and a metal mechanism. It has four columns of keys for entering amounts, an operating button, five function keys, a paper tape, a cash drawer, and pop-up indicators.Above the keys is a locked door.
Description
This cash register has a wooden frame covered with brass and a metal mechanism. It has four columns of keys for entering amounts, an operating button, five function keys, a paper tape, a cash drawer, and pop-up indicators.
Above the keys is a locked door. Lifting it reveals counters for numbers of customers and amounts spent. This is National Cash Register Company’s model 1054X-6, with serial number 1703570. It dates from 1919.
date made
1919
maker
National Cash Register Company
ID Number
MA.319500
accession number
238759
catalog number
319500
Herman Hollerith began manufacturing tabulating machines to compile statistics to the U.S. Bureau of the Census.
Description
Herman Hollerith began manufacturing tabulating machines to compile statistics to the U.S. Bureau of the Census. The nation only compiles a census every ten years, so Hollerith sought business from foreign governments and from commercial customers.
As early as 1895, the New York Central began using tabulating equipment to track goods moved by the railroad. Hollerith radically redesigned the punch card, putting information in columns with the numbers from 0 to 9. Several columns of numbers comprised a field, which contained information on a single matter. By 1907, the Central was an established customer and other railroads adopted machine accounting. The Southern Railway Company used this 45-column card. It has fields for the date, the receiving station, the waybill number, the code, the forwarding station, the junction point, "Com.", "C.L.", freight, charges, and prepaid amounts.
Reference:
G. D. Austrian, Herman Hollerith: Forgotten Pioneer of Information Processing, New York: Columbia University Press, 1982, pp. 111–141, 250–251.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1910
1910, roughly
1910 roughly
maker
Tabulating Machine Company
ID Number
MA.317982.01
accession number
317982
catalog number
317982.01
The McCaskey Register Company of Alliance, Ohio, manufactured systems for keeping track of accounts and credit registers from its organization in 1903 until its purchase by Victor Adding Machine Company in 1953. The firm was started by Perry A.
Description
The McCaskey Register Company of Alliance, Ohio, manufactured systems for keeping track of accounts and credit registers from its organization in 1903 until its purchase by Victor Adding Machine Company in 1953. The firm was started by Perry A. McCaskey, a grocer in Lisbon, Ohio, who took out a patent May 19, 1896, for a “bill and account file” (#560523). He also patented a more complex “credit-accounting appliance” on December 30, 1902 (#717247). McCaskey contiinued to assign patents to the McCaskey Register Company through 1907, although ownership of the firm passed to others and several other inventors contributed to the product.
This particular machine combines a system for keeping accounts with a cash drawer. It has a wooden base with a wooden roll-top cover. A slatted panel designed for holding credit slips fits over the cash drawer and a piece of glass that fits over the panel. A silver-colored metal compartment is on the front of the cash drawer, with five buttons at the top. A bell is at the back on the inside.
McCaskey patents describe a system of credit slips that fit on bill-holders in the back of the machine. This machine has no bill-holders or slips.
The donor dated this machine to 1893. However, it was made after the McCaskey Register Company was founded in 1903 and resembles McCaskey’s 1907 patent, hence the later date assigned.
References:
P. A. McCaskey, “Credit-Accounting Appliance,” U.S. Patent 717247, December 30, 1902.
Craig Bara and Lyle Crist, Alliance, Charleston, SC: Arcadia Press, 1998, 29.
Richard R. Crandall and Sam Robins, The Incorruptible Cashier, vol. 2, Vestal, N.Y.: Vestal Press, 1990, pp. 318–319.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1910
maker
McCaskey Register Company
ID Number
MA.336597
accession number
1977.0174
catalog number
336597
This 1913 National Cash Register Company cash register has an ornate brass exterior with a marble plate above the cash drawer. In addition to the wooden cash drawer and pop-up indicators at the top, the machine had two rows of keys.
Description
This 1913 National Cash Register Company cash register has an ornate brass exterior with a marble plate above the cash drawer. In addition to the wooden cash drawer and pop-up indicators at the top, the machine had two rows of keys. Keys in the top row are numbered 90, 70, 50, 35, 25, 15,and 5 (the rightmost key is missing a label). Keys in the bottom row are labeled $1, 80, 60, 40, 30, 20, 10 (the rightmost key is missing a label). Inside a locked compartment above the keys is a register that reads dollars and cents up to $9999.99, a four-digit customer counter, and a two-digit no sale counter. The machine has no mechanism to assist the clerk in adding up totals for individual sales and no paper tape to serve as a receipt. It has serial number 1265603.
By this time, aggressive sales tactics, numerous acquisitions, and frequent lawsuits had won NCR dominance in the cash register market. The firm also trained numerous young executives, including Thomas J. Watson. When the U.S. government found NCR in violation of antitrust law, several of these executives, including Watson, were fired. Watson was soon hired by the Computing Tabulating Machine Company of Endicott, New York, becoming the president of a firm that soon was known as IBM.
References:
Cortada, James. Before the Computer: IBM, NCR, Burroughs, and Remington Rand and the Industry They Created. 1865-1956, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Crandall, Robert L. and Sam Robins. The Incorruptible Cashier, vol. II, Vestal, N.Y.: The Vestal Press, 1990.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1913
maker
National Cash Register Company
ID Number
MA.333754
accession number
302254
catalog number
333754
The Underwood Model 5, introduced in 1899, is the result of almost thirty years of innovation and improvements in typewriter manufacture. It became the ubiquitous office machine for another thirty years, and its sales led Underwood to dominate the market.
Description
The Underwood Model 5, introduced in 1899, is the result of almost thirty years of innovation and improvements in typewriter manufacture. It became the ubiquitous office machine for another thirty years, and its sales led Underwood to dominate the market. The Model 5 became the modern standard of how a typewriter worked and what it looked like.
The first successful commercial typewriter, developed by Christopher Scholes and Carlos Glidden, was brought to the public in 1874 by the Remington Company. Two elements from that first machine remained dominant in the design of eventual typewriters: the QWERTY keyboard, a pattern of letters on the keyboard, and the telegraph type key movement. At first sales were slow, but the typewriter industry grew as businesses expanded along with their need to retain records, and process paperwork at fast speeds. More and more people, mostly women, learned the new skill of typing, creating a new class of clerical worker, according to historian JoAnne Yates.
There were a handful of typewriter manufacturers by the end of the 1880s such as Remington, a leader in the industry, L.C. Smith & Brothers, Caligraph, Hammond, and a number of smaller firms. As the number of manufacturers grew, so too did the improvements, including the addition of a shift key to activate upper and lower case letters, the size and weight had been reduced but until 1895, but typists could not see what they had typed until the typed page advanced forward.
In the early 1890s, Franz X Wagner, a German immigrant, engineered the first reliable "visible" typewriter that allowed the typist to see the text as they typed. Wagner had already designed several earlier typing machines. John T. Underwood, producer of office supplies such as carbon paper and ribbons, purchased Wagner's design and manufactured it as the Underwood Model 1 in 1895. Unlike earlier machines, which had an up strike type bar from underneath the paper, the new design in
After six years and two other models that improved touch, and tab function and provided quieter operation, Underwood came out with the Model 5 in 1900. Compared to earlier machines of the 1870s, this machine is plain. The machine in the collection was produced in 1910. It has a black frame with gold lettering and stripping.
Date made
1914
maker
Underwood Typewriter Company
ID Number
ME.312108
accession number
161692
catalog number
312108
This cash register has a wooden case with glass-covered pop-up indicator numbers at the back. A metal lever that moves laterally across the front of the machine points to multiples of 5 from 5 to 95.
Description
This cash register has a wooden case with glass-covered pop-up indicator numbers at the back. A metal lever that moves laterally across the front of the machine points to multiples of 5 from 5 to 95. On the right is an auxiliary lever for indicating amounts from 0 cents to 4 cents. On the left is another auxiliary lever for indicating 0, 1, or 2 dollars, hence the cash register indicates amounts up to $2.99. When the pointer-lever is depressed, the dollar, multiple of 5 cents, and 0 cent to 4 cent amounts are indicated on separate indicators at the back of the machine.
A window in the front of the machine is above the scale for the pointer. It is supposed to be covered with a shutter which can be opened only with a lock and key, keeping a secure record of transactions. No lock or key is evident.
The wooden cash drawer has six compartments for coins and three for paper bills. A spring at the back of the drawer keeps it in place.
The Model 106 is not listed in McCarthy in 1924, although other St. Louis cash registers are. The company is not mentioned in the 1928 edition of the book.
References:
Richard R. Crandell and Sam Robbins, The Incorruptible Cashier, vol. 2, Vestal, N.Y.: Vestal Press Ltd., 1990, pp. 80–84, 319, 320.
James H. McCarthy, The American Digest of Business Machines, Chicago, 1924, pp.160–162, 585.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1915
maker
St. Louis Cash Register Company, Inc.
ID Number
1982.0735.01
catalog number
1982.0735.01
accession number
1982.0735
The National Cash Register Company of Dayton, Ohio, expanded rapidly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Description
The National Cash Register Company of Dayton, Ohio, expanded rapidly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It soon offered not only registers that kept digital records of transactions, but so-called autographic registers that simply allowed one to maintain written records of sales. This example consists of an oak box with a hinged lid, an opening in the lid that reveals a paper tape on which sales may be recorded, and a cash drawer. The decoration at the back of the register, the frame around the paper tape, and the handle on the door are of brass.
The National Size 45 autographic register sold in 1908 for $20.00. For related documentation see 1987.0751.03 and 1987.0751.04.
Reference: Richard R. Crandall and Sam Robins, The Incorruptible Cashier, vol. 2, Vestal, N.Y.: Vestal Press, 1990, pp. 304–315, esp. 312.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1913
maker
National Cash Register Company
ID Number
1987.0751.01
accession number
1987.0751
catalog number
1987.0751.01
The McCaskey Credit Register Company of Alliance, Ohio, was in business from 1903 until its acquisition by the Victor Adding Machine Company in 1953.
Description
The McCaskey Credit Register Company of Alliance, Ohio, was in business from 1903 until its acquisition by the Victor Adding Machine Company in 1953. It manufactured a variety of devices to assist in accounting, including this one for keeping track of the accounts of customers.
The instrument is made of ferrous metal, painted black. The outside frame holds eight panels or leaves that rest vertically but may be opened out horizontally. The back of the front leaf and the front of the second are divided to allow an alphabetic index of the later leaves, with small paper slips giving the names of customers and a number for each name. The back of the second leaf, the front and back of the third through seventh leaves, and the front of the eighth leaf are divided into compartments, each of which has a clamp to hold the sales slips in place. These compartments are numbered from 1 to 200. Patent dates listed on the front of the machine range from October 10, 1899, to February 4, 1913.
A mark on the front of the machine reads: The McCASKEY (/) McCASKEY SYSTEMS (/) THE McCASKEY REGISTER CO. (/) ALLIANCE, OHIO. A mark on a metal tab on the borrom of the inside of the front reads: 110831. A mark on a small slip on the first panel reads: 68 - York Springs Fire Co. A mark on a small slip on the second panel reads: Huntington Township. York Springs is a town in Adams County (near Gettysburg), Pennsylvania. The town of Huntington is the county seat of Huntington County, Pennsylvania.
Reference:
Rand-McNally Library Atlas, 1912.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1913
maker
McCaskey Register Company
ID Number
1989.0186.01
accession number
1989.0186
catalog number
1989.0186.01
This component consists of two aluminum pieces that hold ten parallel flexible rods. It may have served as a flexible connector for Powers Accounting Machine Company equipment.A mark stamped on one of the pieces reads: 1---U.
Description
This component consists of two aluminum pieces that hold ten parallel flexible rods. It may have served as a flexible connector for Powers Accounting Machine Company equipment.
A mark stamped on one of the pieces reads: 1---U. Several letters scratched on the other piece read: 1Y J-POWERS. A mark scratched on the other side of this piece reads: 1914.
Reference:
William W. Lasker, "Flexible-Connection Box," U.S. Patent 1,311,565, June 24, 1919.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1914
maker
James Powers
ID Number
1991.0871.02
accession number
1991.0871
catalog number
1991.0871.02
One inscription on this celluloid rule reads “COPYRIGHT G. P. WILHELM 1917 / MFR. AND DISTRIBUTOR EDWARD C. MCKAY / CLEVELAND, OHIO / PATENT APPLIED FOR.” Another reads “THE MILOMETER.” Glenn Perrin Wilhelm (1889-1941) was an officer in the U.S.
Description
One inscription on this celluloid rule reads “COPYRIGHT G. P. WILHELM 1917 / MFR. AND DISTRIBUTOR EDWARD C. MCKAY / CLEVELAND, OHIO / PATENT APPLIED FOR.” Another reads “THE MILOMETER.” Glenn Perrin Wilhelm (1889-1941) was an officer in the U.S. Army, and an authority on ballistics. He devised this slide rule-like computer for forward observers, to help them direct the indirect fire of machine guns and small arms.
Ref: Glenn P. Wilhelm, Machine Gun Fire Control (Cleveland: Edward C. McKay, 1917).
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1917
ID Number
2006.0098.1569
catalog number
2006.0098.1569
accession number
2006.0098

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