William Seward Burroughs I (January 28, 1857 – September 14, 1898) was an American inventor born in

Rochester, New York Rochester () is a City (New York), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, the county seat, seat of Monroe County, New York, Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, ...

Life and career

Personal life

Burroughs was the son of a mechanic and worked with machines throughout his childhood. While he was still a small boy, his parents moved to

Auburn, New York Auburn is a city in Cayuga County, New York, United States. Located at the north end of Owasco Lake, one of the Finger Lakes in Central New York, the city had a population of 26,866 at the 2020 census. It is the largest city of Cayuga County, the ...

, where he and his brothers were educated in the public school system. He married his wife, Ida (née Selover) in 1879. They had two sons and two daughters: Jennie, Horace, Mortimer (father of William S. Burroughs II), and Helen.

Inventor

In 1875, he started working as a clerk in a bank. Much of his job consisted of long hours reviewing ledgers for errors. At this time, Burroughs became interested in developing an adding machine. At the bank, there had been a number of prototypes, but in inexperienced users' hands, they would sometimes give incorrect and even outrageously wrong answers. Burroughs' did not find his clerical work agreeable, as he was fond of, and talented, with mechanics. After seven years working as a clerk at the bank, he resigned. In the early 1880s, Burroughs was advised by a doctor to move to an area with a warmer climate; he moved to

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...

where he obtained a job in the Boyer Machine Shop. These new surroundings, which appealed to him more, hastened the development of an idea he had already, of an adding machine. His new job gave him the opportunity to build his prototype of the adding machine. Accuracy was the foundation of his work. He made his design drawings on metal plates, to prevent distortion. Burroughs filed his first patent, for the invention of a "

calculating machine 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 ...

" in 1885. It was designed to ease the monotony of clerical arithmetic. By 1890, the machines were well known in the banking industry, and adoption was spreading.

Company founder

Burroughs founded the American Arithmometer Company in 1886. After his death, partner John Boyer renamed the business, calling it the Burroughs Adding Machine Company, from 1904 onward. He was awarded the Franklin Institute's John Scott Legacy Medal shortly before his death. He was posthumously inducted into the

National Inventors Hall of Fame The National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) is an American not-for-profit organization, founded in 1973, which recognizes individual engineers and inventors who hold a U.S. patent of significant technology. Besides the Hall of Fame, it also opera ...

. He was the grandfather of

Beat Generation The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generatio ...

writer

William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...

and great-grandfather of William S. Burroughs Jr., who was also a writer. Burroughs also received a patent for an electric alarm clock in 1892. He died in Citronelle, Mobile County, Alabama and was interred in

Bellefontaine Cemetery Bellefontaine Cemetery is a nonprofit, non-denominational cemetery and arboretum in St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1849 as a rural cemetery, Bellefontaine is home to a number of architecturally significant monuments and mausoleums such as the ...

in St. Louis, Missouri.

Patents

* ''Calculating-machine.'' Filed January 1885, issued August 1888. * ''Calculating-machine.'' Filed August 1885, issued August 1888. * ''Calculating-machine.'' Filed March 1886, issued August 1888. * ''Calculating-machine.'' Filed November 1887, issued August 1888. *''Electric alarm clock.'' Issued February 1892. *''Calculating machine.'' Issued week ending September 5, 1893

References

External links

Burroughs Corporation Records
Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Collection contains the records of the Burroughs Corporation, and its predecessors the American Arithmometer Company and Burroughs Adding Machine Company.
William S. Burroughs
biography and science resources at The Franklin Institute's Case Files online exhibit
Burroughs Adding Machine
Burroughs Registering Accountant at The Franklin Institute. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Burroughs, William Seward American manufacturing businesspeople 19th-century American inventors American people of English descent Businesspeople from Rochester, New York William S. Burroughs 1857 births 1898 deaths Burials at Bellefontaine Cemetery Burroughs Corporation American technology company founders Burroughs Corporation people