One of the Early “Comptographs”
This lot of machines, one hundred in number (a goodly number in those days), were equipped with a special hand-knob in front on the left side for automatically printing the totals, and with means by which the ciphers were printed only on operation of the paper shift-lever, which allowed the operator to depress the keys from left to right or any way he pleased.
Felt recorder in “Engineering” of London, Eng.
The best evidence as to what these machines looked like is to be found in the [reproduction on the opposite page] of an illustration which appeared in “Engineering” of London, in 1891.
It will be noted that the patent drawings of the Felt calculator are also displayed. They were used to describe the adding mechanism of the recorder.
The total printing device is shown and described in patent No. 465,255, while the patent for the printing of the ciphers by the hand shift-lever was not applied for until 1904.
It may be argued, and argued true, that these two later features in their generic application to the recording-adding machine Art were anticipated by Burroughs in his invention herein previously described. But, assuming that these features were operative features in the Burroughs machine, they could not be claimed in combination with a printing mechanism that was operative to give practical results and in themselves did not make the recording-adder possible. Nor was the means shown for recording the totals of use except with means for legible recording.
Total recording a Felt combination
Legible listing of items and automatic recording of totals first achieved by Felt
There is no desire to discredit what Burroughs did, but let the credit for what Burroughs accomplished come into its own, in accordance with the chronological order in which it may be proved that Burroughs really produced a machine that had a practical and legible recording mechanism. Then we will find that to produce such proof we must accept the fact that in all the successful recording machines manufactured and sold by the Burroughs Adding Machine Co., the printing type-sector, the printing type-hammers and the overlapping hammer-triggers with their broad functioning features forming a part of Felt’s invention, have been used to produce legible recording, and that the combination of practical total printing was dependent on Felt’s achievement.