This .60 caliber smoothbore flintlock musket was manufactured in Pennsylvania about 1820 for trade with American Indians. The lockplate, stamped "Ketland & Co." and "UNITED STATES" was manufactured in Britain for use by U.S. military contract manufacturers.
By the mid-20th century, printing adding machines with a block of ten keys sold much more cheaply than full-keyboard machines. Mindful that it was losing sales, Burroughs Adding Machine Company of Detroit set out to manufacture its own ten-key machine. The Burroughs Patent Division acquired examples and blueprints of a recently introduced British adding machine, the Summit.
This manually operated machine has 11 white plastic keys numbered 1 to 11 (for Sterling currency), as well as a 0 bar. Four black keys are on the right and a correction key is on the left. A place indicator is above the keyboard and a printing mechanism behind it. This includes a paper tape 6 cm. (2 3/8”) wide, a black ribbon, and a serrated edge for tearing the paper tape. The rightmost type bar prints symbols. A metal cover fits over the ribbon and mechanism. Left and right wheels turn the tape and advance the paper. A place for a crank exists, but no crank is present. The machine allows one to enter numbers up to nine digits long and prints nine-digit totals.
The machine is marked on the front: Summit. It is also marked there: MADE IN GREAT BRITAIN. It has serial number: #1895. A red Burroughs Patent Department tag attached to the machine reads: #300. Compare to 1982.0794.76.
This full-keyboard,non-printing electric adding machine has a green metal frame and plastic keys in two shades of green. It was manufactured by the Bell Punch Company of London, England, for use with British currency.
The rightmost column has nine light green keys, with complementary digits indicated so that the digits on any key add up to 11. The next column from the right has nine dark green keys, with complementary digits indicated so that the digits on one key add up to nine. The next column has a single dark green key, with a one and complementary 0. There are then nine columns of keys, with nine keys in each column, and the usual complementary digits indicated. The leftmost column has six keys, numbered from 1 to 6.
Presumably the rightmost columns reads pence, the next two from the left shillings, and the next up to nine pounds. The leftmost column may be function keys. There are levers on either side of the keyboard. A row of 13 number dials is above the keyboard, and another row of 13 dials is below. The leftmost of these dials indicates a function, not a digit. The windows in the case over these dials are covered with glass. Below both registers is a row of knobs. The knobs are rotated to set decimal markers. A cord at the back of the machine has a wooden two-pronged plug. Taped to the plug are wires from a rubber-covered wire that has a two-pronged plug at the end.
The machine is marked on the front and the back: SUMLOCK. It is stamped on the bottom: GUARANTEED MADE IN GREAT BRITAIN. A metal tag on the bottom reads: DESIGNED AND MANUFACTURED (/) UNDER THEIR PATENTS BY (/) BELL PUNCH COMPANY LIMITED. (/) LONDON - ENGLAND. It also reads: U.S.A. (/) 2,142,286. . . 2,569,508. These are first and last U.S. patent numbers in a list of U.K., Australian, Swiss, Swedish, Belgian, Canadian, U.S., French, and Danish patents. A small piece of tape once attached to the side of the instrument reads: #11 SUMLOCK FRAC. (/) CAL. (/) #500078. Last number of this mark may be serial number of instrument. A red Burroughs Patent Department tag reads: PATENT DEPT. (/) #312.
Reference:
Fédération Nationale des Chambres Syndicales de la Mécanographie, Fédération de Reprise officielle des Machines à Ecrire, Machines à Calculer . . ., Lyon, 1970, p. 83.
In a book published in the year of his death, Scottish mathematician and laird John Napier (1550-1617) described several aids to arithmetic computations. One, since known as Napier’s rods or Napier’s bones, was a set of rods marked with the multiples of the digits from 0 to 9. Napier explained how to use these rods to assist in multiplication and division and, with the use of a special additional rod, take square roots and cube roots.
This set of Napier’s rods contains ten short wooden number rods with square cross section, and an eleventh, wider rod for square and cube roots. Each face of each number rod contains the first ten multiples of a digit. Each square containing a multiple is divided diagonally, with the tens value of the number written in the upper left corner and the ones value in the lower right corner. The number rods have multiples of the following numbers:
3 rods have multiples of 0, 1, 9, and 8
2 rods have multiples of 1, 5, 8, and 4
3 rods have multiples of 3, 2, 6, and 7
2 rods have multiples of 3, 4, 6, and 5
Four digits on the top of each rod indicates which multiples it contains. The sum of the digits whose multiples are on opposite sides of a rod always totals 9. All four of these types of rods are described in Napier's Rabdology. However, Napier suggested using ten distinct rods. The digits on the larger rod do follow Napier's description. The rods fit in a red leather-covered case.
For accounts of the use of the rods, see Napier, Bryden, or online sources. Napier also discovered logarithms, which had a more lasting influence on calculations as they came to be embodied inan instrument called the slide rule.
This set of rods was acquired by purchase. The case is a modern reproduction produced by the vendor.
References:
John Napier, Rabdology, trans. William F. Richardson with an introduction by Robin Rider, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press and Los Angeles: Tomash Publishers, 1990.
D.J. Bryden, Napier's Bones: A History and Instruction Manual, London: Harriet Wynter Publications, Ltd., 1992.
This is one of two English perpetual calendar medals in the collections using the Julian (rather than the present-day Gregorian) calendar. The Gregorian calendar would not be adopted in England until 1752. The small metal disc contains a wealth of calendrical information.
One side of the object has six concentric scales. The outermost scale give, for successive leap years, the day of the week of March 1 (the first day of the new year in the Julian calendar), as well as the date of Easter in successive years (with 1 indicating the month of March and 2 indicating April). Text next to this scale reads: EASTER (/) 1716.
The next innermost scale relates to times of the moon’s southing (e.g. the time the moon crosses the local meridian). It is labeled: SOUTH. The next innermost scale indicates the age of the moon on March 22 of successive years. This, the epact, increases by 11 days each year. The scale is labeled: EPACT. The three central scales on this side of the medal allow one to estimate the time of sunset for various days of the year. There is a central image of a setting sun.
The reverse side of the medal has a 7 x 7 calendrical table. The first two rows serve as heads of columns, indicating months which begin on the same day of the Julian calendar. These are 9 and 1 (November and March), 6 (August), 11 and 3 (January and May), 8 (October), 5 and 2 (July and April), 10 and 7 (December and September), and 12 and 2 (February and June). Note that in later calendrical styles, January and February would be in the next year.
The day of the week represented by the numbers in a column depended on the year. For example, in the Julian calendar for 1716, the columns indicate dates of Tuesdays. November and March had Tuesdays with dates 1, 8, 15, 22, and 29; August had Tuesdays with dates 2, 9, 16, 23, and 30; and so forth. Below the rows relating to months are five rows with squares numbered from 1 to 31. A mark in the last row reads: ABUCKLEY.
Compare MA.316919.2.
The object came to the Smithsonian from the collection of Henry Russell Wray.
Ackermann describes a single year calendar medal made by the English maker Andrew Buckley and refers to other calendar medals of his make.
Reference:
Silke Ackermann, “Maths and Memory: Calendar Medals in the British Museum Part I,” The Medal, Autumn, 2004, vol. 45, esp. pp. 18-20. Another example, unsigned, which has been attributed to Buckley and is a perpetual calendar, has British Museum catalog number 1906,1103.4743. A single year calendar medal signed by him has number 1901,1115.4. Both are described at the website of the British Museum.
Hand mixer for food. Molded plastic handle, formed for easy grip, dark brown with lines of red "faux" wood grain. Long mixing end, thick bent wire, with single length of coil in a fan shape.
Handle is marked: "PAT. NO. 2,390,544". Patented to Thomas Lamb, New York, New York, December 11, 1945, for "Handle", "...handles or hand grips adapted for use in connection with many articles which are lifted, pulled, pushed or otherwise manipulated by hand, as for example, luggage, hand tools, flat irons..."
Mixing end is marked: "#1060 U.S. PAT. 2906510". Patented to Victoria P. Harris, New York, New York, September 29, 1959, for "Hand Mixer for Food". "This invention relates to manually-operated mixing devices, and more particularly to devices for blending gravy, sauce, and the like, folding flour into beaten egg whites, aerating fruit juices, and performing similar operations."