As you wander the patent model hall at the Smithsonian‘s National Museum of American History, a small wooden box-like contraption catches your eye. Its series of intricate, interlocking gears and registers speak of an era when the concepts underlying modern computers remained in their infancy. This relic happens to be one of the earliest adding machines ever conceived in 1858 – the brainchild of a New York entrepreneur named Jabez Burns who helped usher in the age of automated calculation.
From Horse Carts to Coffee Mogul
Long before creating his mechanical adding "addometer," Jabez Burns led a remarkable American life in the mid-19th century. He personified the mythos of a self-made businessman, rising from working class origins to later found prominent companies. As a young adult, Burns worked various jobs involving manual labor and machinery – driving horse carts around New York‘s lumber yards while also dabbling in the peddling trade.
According to biographical records, Burns‘ first consistent exposure to office arithmetic practices came through bookkeeping roles in the 1850s. This specialized mathematical knowledge would prove formative when Burns later construed the idea for his adding machine. However, at just 32 years old in 1858, his national legacy remained years away.
The 1860s saw Burns‘ interests shift towards innovations in coffee production equipment. He founded Jabez Burns & Sons in 1864 to manufacture a patented coffee roasting machine of his own design, launching a prominent commercial venture. The company bearing his name continued operating for decades even after Burns‘ death in 1888, demonstrating remarkable success as an entrepreneurial newcomer.
Inside the Mechanical Marvel of an Adding "Addometer"
Yet to technology historians, Burns‘ most enduring legacy lies not with coffee but calculation equipment. Four years before launching his coffee startup, Burns obtained US patent #21,243 in October of 1858 for a "new and useful Machine for Adding Numbers” – what he named the “addometer” [1].
This hand-crafted contraption measured just 16 x 39 x 12 cm but contained over 300 precision components. Looking almost like an elaborate clock, four large toothed wheels on the addometer’s face allowed users to set input numbers. Intertwined sets of brass and wood gears then automatically calculated summations through a sequence of registers tracking carry-over amounts.
According to patent records, Burns boasted how "…figures of any length can thus be added with greater facility and rapidity than has heretofore been attained" [1]. As one of the first multi-digit adding machines employing concepts like internal carry transfers, his addometer pointed towards more sophisticated computing technology still decades away.
| Addometer Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Construction Materials | wood, brass, tin |
| Dimensions | 16 x 39 x 12 cm |
| Internal Components | ~300 gears, registers, levers |
| User Input Mode | Manual rotation of 4 toothed wheels |
| Calculation Capacity | Up to 4-digit addition problems |
Table showing selected specifications of Jabez Burns‘ "Addometer" adding machine
The Genesis of Computing Innovation
As a pioneer in conceiving early adding machines, understanding Burns‘ place in history first requires examining technological precursors…
The Antiquity of Analog Computation
Scholars widely credit mathematician Blaise Pascal with developing one of humanity‘s first documented adding machines in 1642 – the Pascaline. This lever-based system resembled a mechanical calculator more than the automated additive power envisioned by Burns centuries later. But it constituted an important first step in replacing tedious manual arithmetic with machinery.
In the early 1800s, trailblazers like Charles Babbage began hypothesizing far more sophisticated "analytical engines" for everything from calculating logarithms to generating printed tables. While never transformed into physical devices within their lifetimes, these visionaries foreshadowed program-controlled computers of the 20th century in uncanny ways [2].
Burns‘ Role Accelerating the Future
Against this backdrop, Burn‘s addometer filing in 1858 predated viable commercial adding machines by over a decade. The first widely sold production models like the Comptometer or Burroughs Printer emerged across the industry between 1870 through the mid-1880s [3].
So while personal factors kept Burns‘ own invention confined as a one-of-a-kind prototype, its forward-looking design still helped set mechanical calculation on a path towards full automation over the coming century. Had it reached commercial scale, branding like the “Burns Addometer” may have adorned accounting desks alongside other prominent adding machines companies at the turn of the century.
The Personification of an American Inventor
Beyond just the addometer‘s brief backstory, the life experience of Jabez Burns himself epitomizes a classic narrative – the ingenious American inventor and entrepreneur ascending in society through grit and inspiration.
Before the Adding Machines: The Peddler’s Apprentice
During his early adulthood in the 1850s, Burns likely developed crucial insights that informed his future adding machine ideas through previous jobs calculating figures by hand. As a young peddler‘s apprentice roaming the Financial District, he dealt firsthand with the tedium of repeated arithmetic computations. This may have spurred contemplating ways to mechanize such monotonous work, much as manufacturing automation eased production burdens in other commercial arenas.
Later bookkeeping roles gave Burns Further exposure to hand-tabulated business data, further reinforcing pain points he hoped to solve with instruments like his addometer.
Lasting Success as Coffee Mogul
While his adding machine never fully left the ground, Burns enjoyed prosperity in alternative businesses – most enduringly with patented coffee products that helped launch an eponymous label.
Burns leveraged insider knowledge from years around New York‘s bustling 19th century coffee trades as inspiration for his commercial roasting equipment. And that namesake Jabez Burns brand later stood the test of time by continuing for over a century after its founder passed away until modern corporate mergers in the 1960s [4].
Visionary Spirit Preserved in History
So while never recognized in his own era as a computing pioneer, later historians memorialized Burns‘ forward-looking adding machine concept by preserving the hand-built model itself. It now enjoys sanctity as an early artefact in the Smithsonian archives to represent the mechanization of calculation.
The commercial mogul who drove 19th century coffee culture by day was also an ingenious inventor pondering advanced adding devices by night, embodying America‘s great economic promise. Burns‘ story encapsulates a era when mechanical automation through instruments like his addometer enticed visionaries with glimpses into an accelerating technological future. One which would later germinate into the full blossoming of computing technology innovations still unfolding to this day.
