"You think I'm gonna make 50 more episodes?" God I hope so. I'm a chemical engineering student who is also obsessed with mechanics. Your dry humor, knowledge of mathematics and love for mechanical computing devices is a perfect combination. Good luck and Godspeed for the next 50.
I just recently found this channel, and the combination of his humor and the cool tech and history is just one of the best things out there. Very quickly becoming one of my favorites!
Seeing the broken machines makes me want to obtain a broken one to fix. I’m a software developer and it’s nice to debug something physical now and then.....
I'm also a software developer and I bought a broken troncet type pocket adder from the forties that I've been restoring. Got most of it done over a weekend. The reset handle is the one part remaining. Fun project, I recommend.
"You hold this, and you hold America - like it used to be. And it don't work no more!" I appreciate your humor - and sometimes you share a gem. This is one of them!
Fun video! Electrifying the comptometer did have some purpose - it did away with the errorchecking button (no more partial keypresses) and all the keys now had a much smaller and equal amount of travel and a much lighter touch. Actually though, your electric comptometer has little to do with your original one. In 1962 when Felt&Tarrant was bought out by Victor, they soon stopped making the existing unsuccessful models and started importing machines from the UK made by Bell Punch. The latter had bought the UK parts of Felt&Tarrant, which allowed them to change the name of their machines from Sumlock to Comptometer.
Thanks as always for the bigger story! I notice also there seems to be a subtraction lever which would be a significant new feature over the classic model, if it really is key-driven direct subtraction.
@@ChrisStaecker As far as I know it's like this: The keys would always add to the working register at the front (so subtraction remains by complements). The rear register is the storage register, and the value of the working register could be added to or subtracted from the storage register directly, just like the M+ and M- buttons on an electronic calculator.
Hopefully the machine I've got on order will be more or less the same as the one in this video - it'll be fun to see what it's like once I've waved my magic wand and got it working properly - I falsely called it a Sumlock but in actual fact it's just badged as a Comptometer with the Bell Punch plate on the under side - the "original" manuals that are coming with it still have the Sumlock name though.
Channels like this are why I like RU-vid. It's like the internet was in its infancy, just regular people sharing their interest in things. I only found your channel a couple of days ago and I've already watch about 50 videos!
6:44 reminds me of the number layout used by stenography keyboards! (Wikipedia has a good diagram of it) I don't know the details of a Dalton machine, but in steno you press multiple keys at once for input. 1234506789 allows common numbers (the small ones) to be written in one stroke, as well as 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50. 5 and 0 are common endings, so they're grouped together in the middle where the thumb can press them.
Hi, As always, great stuff. Those other people don’t know what they are missing :-) Congrats on the milestone and please keep the bids coming. Alistair
Excellent video! You got yourself a new subscriber 👍 and of all the Burroughs, I liked William the best 😉 btw, there are so many potential jokes with some of the names of these machines
For what little it's worth, that Burroughs machine could be considered Burroughs squared. That silver serial number plate on the bottom is a Burroughs company asset tag. This machine spent a good deal of it's life in an office of the Todd division, whatever that was. Probably printer forms or the like. (edit: a quick google search shows that Burroughs bought out the "Todd Company" in about 1953 or 1954. Further searching shows the Todd Division made a device for imprinting checks that looked rather like a full-keyboard adding machine. Also FWLIW, both the Royal and Victor machines weren't originally the colors they are now. Those cases have yellowed significantly over the years from impingement of UV light breaking down the chains in the top layer of the plastic case. They were probably an ugly beige originally, but not nearly as ugly as they are now. It is possible to undo that damage. If you are interested, look around RU-vid for "retrobright".
Very interesting! Somehow I never realized what that meant. The Todd division is presumably what remained of the Todd Protectograph Company, which was acquired by Burroughs at some point. Thanks!
I’ve been feeding algo for the last 48 hours watching a bunch of your old vids. They are great! You sub count is heading up.. let’s get you to the moon!
Got me a second SUMiT. It has similar issues with unintended back-carrying. It’s also just janky overall. It’s looking more and more like these units just don’t hold up over time.
Got a SUMiT yesterday, with all the ORIGINAL goodies (except the cover). It kinda works, but the carry mechanism is off. I mean it works, but if a reel is set to nine and you turn the one to the left of if it, it’ll “carry” the reel set to nine. Maybe SUMiTs just weren’t very well made.
Haha, here's to the next 50 videos. I love the Swift, and the Dalton looks brilliant. I've just ordered a twin display Sumlock electric Comptometer - I need to see what's the big deal with an electric comptometer because you can't improve on the speed of a standard (non electric) key driven model - maybe it plays MP3s while you do your work!!!!! I'll do a video once it's fixed........
@@ChrisStaecker Ah, yes, I've just seen Jaap's comments, that all makes sense - I'm quite looking forward to trying my electric machine when it turns up - hope the seller has packed it properly, it's a heavy unit and I don't mind fixing stuff that's faulty but not when it's smashed to pieces in transit.
@@ChrisStaecker Hi Chris, a little update on the Comptometer model 12 electric machine - I now have 2 of the slightly later model - they have the slightly confused title of Comptometer 993s on the outside of the case and Sumlock 912 on the under side because they were made at the time that Sumlock had bought the uk rights to the Comptometer name from what was left of Felt and Tarrant. Both of these machines were completely seized when they arrived - that's not unusual for the Sumlock and Bell Punch machines (Sumlock was a trading name of the Bell Punch Company or something like that) - on manual machines it takes a while to free everything off to get them working - it took even longer on the electric machine purely because there are more moving parts. I've now got everything mechanical working as it should on one of the two machines. That just leaves the electrical part to fix - the motor is fine - from my experience on the old electrical machines, the motors are usually fine, it's everything else that fails!!! I never even attempt to plug the electrical machines in until I've checked them and sorted out all the mechanical issues, it can just cause more problems if they are jammed. If I had plugged it in before I sorted the mechanical issues it wouldn't have worked because it's internal fuse had blown. If I'd have replaced the fuse it would have blown again, possibly with a bit of a "pop" from inside the machine because one of the capacitors had failed to a dead short - in fact all the capacitors look decidedly dodgy so I've got replacements on order. The same fault is present on the second machine - a blown capacitor causing a dead short. Even if the capacitors hadn't been blown, the machine wouldn't have worked because as soon as I cranked the machine by hand the lever that opens the motor switch stuck in the open position so nothing would have happened. One final note about the electrical parts - on my models at least, there are capacitors from "live" to the case of the machine (all the capacitors are there to suppress electrical interference) - if these capacitors had failed in a shorted state, the metal case would become "live" - I will be replacing these with class "Y" safety capacitors which will fail in an "open" state if they ever fail. I suspect your machine would work eventually, given enough time and patience. I will get round to doing a video at some point but I won't go into every detail because that would make quite a long video!!!! Don't throw it away or turn it into a lamp base, you might just e able to fix it one day.
Regna does mean "calculate." Regna makes it a definite noun (like "the regne") but it's weird 'cause it's the female definite article ending. Too bad it doesn't regne. Probably because it wasn't blessed by one of my distant forebears, Fredrik Rosing Bull, who made adding machines and computerish kinda doodads back in the day. Maybe if you soak it in some akvavit . . . . . . Oh, and regn is also the word for "rain." So yeah. Perfect sense.
Thanks! I tried a simple Google translate and got "rain" which puzzled me, but somehow I found it can also mean count (or calculate I guess), which seemed more appropriate.
@@ChrisStaecker: I think it might mean “measure”. “Count” is like “measure”. I’m not sure why I think that, but some of my own reluctant mechanism is pointing that way.
I was wondering, have you ever come across any British mechanical adding machines designed for pounds shillings and pence my father used to repair them in his youth.
Yes I’ve seen those but I don’t have any. Dealing with those non-decimal systems is a real pain for people, but it’s usually pretty easy to implement mechanically- just change a gear from 10 teeth to 16 teeth, or whatever you may need.
@@ChrisStaecker I can see how that would work phone numbers that had a consistent base for each column but in the old pounds shillings and pence days different columns but have different bases, straight addition would still work with Carrie but if you tried multiplying by moving numbers across I don’t see how you could do it easily I’m glad I’ve never had to use the system myself.
Yeah, they're broken, but it seems like you didn't even try to fix them, between plugging them in and turning cranks. Only opened the covers on a few. 'It's jammed', yeah, did you try cleaning it, oiling it, testing the motor on its own?
@@ChrisStaecker I follow a couple guys who do repairs/restorations. Their videos are quite popular. None are quite like this where they are restoring intricate machines. Usually it is removing rust/repainting. The watchmaking guys are quite popular also. This would be a bit of a blend of the two. Repairing one of these devices may be quite involved but fun to watch. Need to poke around and see if there is anyone like that. If not, it might be an interesting opportunity.
