The Millionaire was the first commercially successful

mechanical calculator A mechanical calculator, or calculating machine, is a mechanical device used to perform the basic operations of arithmetic automatically, or (historically) a simulation such as an analog computer or a slide rule. Most mechanical calculators wer ...

that could perform a direct multiplication. It was in production from 1893 to 1935 with a total of about five thousand machines manufactured. It was commercialized as "The Millionaire" in English speaking countries, "La Millionnaire" in French and "Millionär" in German speaking countries.

History

The principle of a calculation machine with progressive transmission of tens was invented by

Chebyshev Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev ( rus, Пафну́тий Льво́вич Чебышёв, p=pɐfˈnutʲɪj ˈlʲvovʲɪtɕ tɕɪbɨˈʂof) ( – ) was a Russian mathematician and considered to be the founding father of Russian mathematics. Chebyshe ...

and demonstrated at the 1878

World's fair A world's fair, also known as a universal exhibition or an expo, is a large international exhibition designed to showcase the achievements of nations. These exhibitions vary in character and are held in different parts of the world at a specif ...

in Paris. In 1881 Chebyshev demonstrated a model of the calculation machine with automatic multiplication but did not take out a patent for it. In 1834 Luigi Torchi of Milan invented a direct multiplication machine. The first patented multiplying machines was due to Edmund Barbour (1872),

Ramón Verea Ramón Silvestre Verea Aguiar y García ( Curantes, 11 December 1833 – Buenos Aires, 6 February 1899) was a Galician journalist, engineer and writer, known as the inventor of a calculator with an internal multiplication table (1878). Works No ...

(1878) and

Léon Bollée Léon Bollée (1 April 1870 – 16 December 1913) was a French automobile manufacturer and inventor. Life Bollée's family were well known bellfounders and his father, Amédée Bollée (1844–1917), was the major pioneer in the automobile i ...

(1889). The Bollée machine could be considered the direct ancestor of the ''Millionaire''. Designed by Otto Steiger, a Swiss engineer, the moving carriage of the Millionaire has a 20 decimal digit accumulator that shows the product after multiplication and into which dividend is entered prior to division. The 10-digit multiplicand or divisor is entered on the sliders (or keyboard, on later models) above the carriage, while successive digits of the multiplier or quotient are entered with a push-button lever on the upper left. A large control knob on the upper right can be set to add, multiply, divide or subtract positions. The ''Millionaire'' was first patented in Germany in 1892. Patents were issued in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

and the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

in 1893, and production started in 1893. From 1899 to 1935 Hans W. Egli of

Zürich Zürich () is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zürich. It is located in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zürich. As of January 2020, the municipality has 43 ...

handled the machine. The American agent for the Millionaire was W. A. Morschhauser of New York. A detailed investigation by Gerald Saudan established that 5,099 "Millionaire" had been manufactured overall in four decades, rather than the commonly quoted 4,655 units. The Millionaire was advertised as being the "only calculating machine on the market ... that requires but one turn of the crank ... for each figure in the multiplier or quotient," making it the fastest calculator available. Advertising from 1913 claims that the United States government had purchased over 100 Millionaire calculators.

Competition

All mechanical calculators commercialized prior to the Millionaire, like the

arithmometer The arithmometer (french: arithmomètre) was the first digital mechanical calculator strong enough and reliable enough to be used daily in an office environment. This calculator could add and subtract two numbers directly and could perform lon ...

, the

Odhner arithmometer The Odhner Arithmometer was a very successful pinwheel calculator invented in Russia in 1873 by W. T. Odhner, a Swedish immigrant. Its industrial production officiallyTrogemann G., Nitussov A.: ''Computing in Russia'', page 39-45, GWV-Vieweg, ...

or the

comptometer The Comptometer was the first commercially successful key-driven mechanical calculator, patented in the United States by Dorr Felt in 1887. A key-driven calculator is extremely fast because each key adds or subtracts its value to the accumulato ...

were simple adding machines; they implemented multiplication by continued addition under operator control. In 1889,

, in France, invented a machine that required only one turn of the crank handle to multiply the number entered on the sliders by a multiplier number. This was accomplished by creating a ''mechanical representation'' of the multiplication table which could be read and used by the machine. The manufacturing cost of Bollée's machine was too high and the production was discontinued after a few units. The Millionaire was built with the same target of direct mechanical multiplication in mind. In first decades of 20th century two other machines with direct multiplication were produced: the Moon-Hopkins and Kuhrt-US.Kuhrt-US
on Rechenmaschinen lllustrated These two companies were then taken over by Burroughs and Brunsviga. These machines filled quite a different niche from the Millionaire. They were book-keeping machines with printing features, and were too unwieldy to perform divisions and complex computations. The Millionaire, however, was better suited for technical computations. This machine weighted some 20 kilograms and was the size of a small suitcase, occupying half of a desk. It was as easy to operate as the Arithmometer, which had established a standard since the mid-XIXth century.

Notes

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External links

John Wolff's Web Museum
An in-depth technical description of The Millionaire calculator.

A historical and technical article about The Millionaire calculator.
Arithmetical Machines & Instruments / 19th Century

Jim Falk's things-that-count.com
showing the rare 10 slider Millionaire calculator
The Millionaire Machine
with

Clifford Stoll Clifford Paul "Cliff" Stoll (born June 4, 1950) is an American astronomer, author and teacher. He is best known for his investigation in 1986, while working as a systems administrator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, that led to th ...

and

Brady Haran Brady John Haran (born 18 June 1976) is an Australian-British independent filmmaker and video journalist who produces educational videos and documentary films for his YouTube channels, the most notable being ''Periodic Videos'' and ''Number ...

Mechanical calculators