Felt Recording and Listing Machine.
Purchased and Used for Ten Years by the
Merchants & Manufacturers Bank of Pittsburgh, Pa.
Machine is now in the National Museum at Washington
After ten years of service this first practical recording-adding machine was still in excellent condition, and in 1907 was secured by the Comptograph Co. from the Bank of Pittsburgh, into which the Merchants & Manufacturers National Bank, along with other banks, had been merged. It was finally procured by Mr. Felt and presented to the National Museum of Washington, D. C., where it may now be found on exhibit along with other inventions produced by Felt. A [photo reproduction of this machine] as it appeared before it was presented to the Museum, is shown on the opposite page.
Features of first practical recorder
Like the machine of the first Felt recorder patent, it was a visible printer, each figure being printed as the key was depressed, the paper being shifted by the hand lever shown at the right.
Unlike the former machine, however, the operator was not called upon to perform the extra operation of winding up a spring to furnish power for the printing.
Power for the printing was stored by the action of the paper shift-lever and an entirely different printing device was used. Provision for printing the ciphers automatically was also a feature of this machine. It was not necessary to operate cipher keys, and there were no such keys to be operated. To print an item having ciphers in it required only the omission of the ciphers as the ciphers would automatically fill in.
The arrangement of the paper shows a good improvement over the first machine, as it was more accessible, being fed from a roll at the top down and around rolls below and looped back so that it is moved upward on the printed surface, where it may be torn off as desired.