NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/alt/folklore/computer/16504

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-20 | 5.6 KB

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Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!uknet!comlab.ox.ac.uk!nnhost!pcl
From: [e-mail] (Paul Leyland)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,sci.math,rec.antiques
Subject: Re: Swedish Adding Machine -- Help Wanted
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 20 Nov 92 14:56:46 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Organization: Oxford University Computing Service, 13 Banbury Rd, Oxford, OX2
    6NN
Lines: 115
In-reply-to: [e-mail]'s message of 19 Nov 92 17:48:4

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Paul Leyland) writes:

I received the following by email.  I've already replied and thanked him.

BTW, *two* seperate people suggested that I should have cross-posted
to soc.culture.nordic as well, for an even more eclectic set of
relevant newsgroups.  Pity I didn't think of it!


Paul
----

> From [e-mail] Fri Nov 20 14:33:58 1992
> From: Magnus Olsson <[e-mail]>
> Organization: Theoretical Physics, Lund University, Sweden

Hello,

I was going to post a follow-up to your article, but we've been having
propagation problems the last few weeks and the article would probably
not make it outside Sweden, or even outside Lund. So could you please
post this for me instead?

I'm afraid I can't really help you with manuals and so on, but I've
got some info hich might interest the readers of
alt.folklore.computers at the least.

In article <[e-mail]> you write:
>
>Last weekend, I acquired a wind-up mechanical adding machine.

"Wind-up" is perhaps not the best description, as it's not driven by a
clockwork! For those who've never seen such a beast: it represents
numbers a series of cogwheels, connected with carries like in an
odometer. To add two numbers, you turn a crank that causes one set of
wheels to be rotated by the amount stored in another set of wheels.
There's a shift mechanism for shifting the registers one decimal
position left or right, thereby facilitating multiplication.

>I don't know the exact model name; nor the manufacturer's complete
>name.  It looks to have been made about 30 years ago; it has three
>registers, two of 10 digits and one of 13.  It's a grey box about 25cm
>wide by 15cm by 15cm.  On the front is a small blue panel with gold
>"Multo" (in a flowing script and underlined) and "ADDO" (in smaller
>capitals).

The manufacturer's name was Addo (from the verb "to add", I suppose),
while "Multo" must be the name of the model (I suppose it meant that
it had some features for multiplication).  This was one of the prides
of Swedish high-tech industry seventy years ago, and they continued to
flourish well into the 1970's - when they were suddenly wiped out by
the emergence of electronic calculators. Apparently, the mamagement
refused to take electronic calculators seriously until it was far too
late.

>From my childhood in the seventies I remember seeing these machines
everywhere - offices, post offices, etc. The hand-cranked models were
sold right until the end. The original models (late 19th century) had
a set of levers for setting the registers; later models (mid 20th
century) had a keyboard. Still later models had an electric motor
instead of the hand crank. The most expensive models also had an
electromechanical printer, and a "microprogram" for doing division. I
remember typing in the division 0 / 0 on one of these beast, to see it
chug away happily in an infinite loop.

>On another panel are some partially erased words.  The
>best I can make them out is: "A.B.  <obliterated, maybe 4-6
>characters> MALMO MADE IN SWEDEN".  There is a umlaut over the O of
>MALMO.

The sign must originally have read (TeX notation for the umlaut)
"A.B. ADDO, MALM\"O. MADE IN SWEDEN". "A.B." is the Swedish
counterpart of the British "Ltd." or "Plc". Malm\"o is Sweden's third
largest city (~ 0.25 M inhabitants, situated right across the Sound
from Copenhagen, Denmark).

>I used to use machines very like this almost 20 years ago when I was a
>undergraduate.  They were already obsolescent, and I was one of only a
>very few who took the trouble to learn how they worked.  After a
>while, I could perform addition/subtraction as fast as I could on a
>calculator; multiplication and division were slower, but not too much
>slower.  I even extracted square roots by Newton Raphson in a
>reasonable time.  *And* I didn't have to worry about batteries going
>flat.  I've got rusty since then, but I expect I'll soon pick it up
>again.

I've heard stories about exams in numerical analysis here in Lund as
late as the early seventies, when each examinee would have his own
Addo machine. The sound of a roomful of undergrads doing
Newton-Raphson on these machines must have been very impressive...

>The real reason I got the machine was that it is a beautiful
>mechanism.

They're very impressive machines, indeed. There are quite a few people
who collect them. A few years ago, a retired teacher who collects them
demonstrated a small part of his collection for the Lund Mathematical
Society. If you'd like, I could try and find out his snail-mail
address for you.

Cheers,

Magnus

Magnus Olsson                   | \e+      /_
Dept. of Theoretical Physics    |  \  Z   / q
University of Lund, Sweden      |   >----<
Internet: [e-mail]     |  /      \===== g
Bitnet: THEPMO@SELDC52          | /e-      \q

--
Paul Leyland <[e-mail]>          | Hanging on in quiet desperation is
Oxford University Computing Service      |     the English way.
13 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6NN, UK     | The time is come, the song is over.
Tel: [phone]  Fax: [phone] | Thought I'd something more to say.