In some way, these are more marvelous than modern calculators and the like. The latter are just magic devices that have circuits and solder and chips, black boxes of our microprocessing gods. Analog adding machines and mechanical calculators, on the other hand, are marvels of complexity on a macro level.
I can't imagine actually inventing such a device.
Originally shared by +George Wiman:
The beautiful machinery of calculation. I love this post so much. When I was a kid, my dad would bring home machines of all kinds for me to take apart, and there were a couple adding machines. I was fascinated by the way they used basic, simple machinery connected in novel ways to do arithmetic.
I got one of them working, too!
The Inner Workings of Antique Calculators Dramatically Photographed by Kevin Twomey
While our modern day gadgets are certainly compact and slick, they’re also incredibly boring when compared to the intricate inner-workings of their predecessors. A small microchip now does the heavy lifting in modern day calculators. But take apart a
