American Adding Machine #5

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Name:

Production:

1913 - 1927

Manufactors:

American Can Company,
Chicago, Illinois

Serialnumber:

65 887

The Machine was 1912 patented from "American Can Co" in Chicago, Illinois.
They started to sell it in the year 1913 for 35 Dollar. The great success of this invention can be seen that the company named itself 1924 after their great invention: "American Adding Machine Co". After that, they sold it for 39 Dollar.

Therefore, my exemplar was built before 1924, because you can read their first Company Name: "American Can Co" on my device..

Instruction Manual:

Input:
You 'typed' with your finger on the desired digit and pulled the red lever upwards with the thumb of the same hand until you reached your finger.

Big lever on the right side:
Adding plus carry preview, by pulling the lever to the bottom. As you push it to the top again, the extra calculated carry was added carry-less to the sum. The concept of the carry preview (Look Ahead Carry) is common in modern computers.
The adding always takes the same time, free from the quantity of digits that you want to add.

After the successful addition, the input is on zero again. You can 'type' in the next value for calculation.

If you use the addition lever without an input, the sum will be set to zero, so its the delete or clear "button".

Tiny lever on the right side: :
Use the tiny lever for deleting the actual input, the calculated sum will not be touched.

Tiny lever on the left side:
You can use this lever for chain addition of the same value. The device counts the number of times you added the same value to your sum, this value you can see on a special 'display', but only single digit. This window is placed below the small lever.

After the input of the value that you want to add you pull the lever to the bottom until you can hear the 'click'. After every addition the value is set as new input value and the "multiplicator" increments by one. You could add the same values in a very quick and save way. If you loose the lever, the "multiplicator" is reset to zero automatically.

The device has a very good user interface, and a very modern processing core, although the engineers in these times had limited ressources.