From Drawings of Barbour Patent No. 133,188
Early Efforts in the
Recording Machine Art
The Art of recording the addition of columns of figures is old in principle, but not in practice. Many attempts to make a machine that would record legibly under all conditions failed. These attempts have been pointed out from time to time as the first invention of the recording-adding machine, especially by those desirous of claiming the laurels.
First attempt to record arithmetical computation
The first attempt at arithmetical recording for which a patent was issued, was made by E. D. Barbour in 1872 ([see illustration on opposite page]).
E. D. Barbour has also the honor of being the first inventor to apply Napier’s principle to mechanism intended to automatically register the result of multiplying a number having several ordinal places by a single digit without mentally adding together the overlapping figures resulting from direct multiplication. He patented this machine in 1872 just prior to the issue of his arithmetical recorder patent. ([See page 181].)
The Barbour Machine
The printing device disclosed in connection with the Barbour machine for recording calculations was of the most simple nature, allowing only for the printing of totals and sub-totals.
Its manipulation consisted of placing a piece of paper under a hinged platen and depressing the platen by hand in the same manner that a time stamp is used. The ink had to be daubed on the type by a hand operation to make legible the impressions of the type.