Brunsviga Model B Review / HowTo

[@mandolinic]

My school bought about 20 Odhner branded calculators in the 1960s. They were identical in concept to this machine. The fun feature was when you subtracted too much, and you got a row of 9's ... and the bell rang!

[@InssiAjaton]

I saw somewhere the Brunsviga calculators, but they were way too expensive for my non-budget of a student. However, doing some lab calculations in long hand, as the required numeric resolution exceeded the slide rule capacity made me really drool for one of these marvels. And as the luck would be, I one day walked past a second hand items store. They had on the window one Brunsviga and one Facit. I was skeptical, but walked in and asked the prices. As expected the nice looking Facit was totally out of my monetary resources. But the somewhat beaten up Brunsviga was just barely within reach. I mean, I likely skipped some meals for that. But anyway, my roommate knew of a procedure (algorithm) to calculate square roots. He was studying road building and land use, for which topics they had a certain number of (newer) Brunsvigas available for loan to do their homework. Plus they had been trained for the use. Anyway, he showed me the procedure for square roots. I used my Brunsviga along with my slide rule(s) until I eventually got my HP 35 pocket calculator. At that point I gave the Brunsviga to my brother who did the bookkeeping on our farm. He never needed the square root process, though...

[@paulhorn2665]

Ahh Brunsviga my favorite calculator. My 1947 Brunsviga 13 ZK is my daily calculator. Interesting story the Nobel-Odhner conneection...I know a another one: The Brunsviga company, known back in 1892 as Grimme, Nathalis & Co. was producing sewing machines, but could not compare with the famous Singer-sewing machine, because of the price. Somehow Mr. Nathalis met Odhner in Hamburg/Germany in 1892 and there he was presented the pinwheel calculator. Now Mr. Nathalis saw his chance for a new market and moved to odhner-licenced calculators under the brand-name "Brunsviga" which became the company name later in the 1950s. Now its all history and long gone, but I walk often by the building at the Johannesstraße here in Hamburg where Mr. Nathalis met Mr. Odhner back in 1892. When I was studiyng in Braunschweig over a decade ago, my Study-1 room appartment-block, was standing on the place where parts of the brunsviga-company-factory stood. There are parts of the building still left in the neighborhood of the appartment-block, which was converted into a high-school in the 1970s...

[@jaapsch2]

That's an excellent point about buttons vs sliders that I hadn't really thought of before. I must disagree with you though, when you characterized the Curta as a pinwheel machine (6:56). It's really a stepped drum machine like the Thomas Arithmometer, except that it has only one drum that is shared by all the digit sliders instead of each slider having its own drum. Apart from that, it's another great video, thanks.

[@ChrisStaecker]

Thanks Jaap- as usual your knowledge is better than mine!

[@austinfernando8406]

@@ChrisStaecker (if you don't know it already) you might like a youtube channel MechanicalComputing, does cgi breakdowns of the mechanism of mechanical calculators (including the curta) with very clear explanations too kzbin.info your videos are great btw

[@ZedDerHoellenhund]

I like your model, this is a really old - and quite nice one. So, don't know if you ever thought about it, but the thing about the pinwheel calculators with number levers vs button driven or set adding machines would be comparable today to calculators vs. scientific calculators. Basically, adding machines were invented because people had trouble adding - especially not forgetting to carry a 1 when needed, but that was pretty much it. The repeat button didn't have a multiplication purpose. You can use it like that because you thought about it now, but back then, the idea was to add identical items which cost the same... except for the comptometer, of course, which was intentionally built to multiply like that. However, the Arithmometer was built intentionally with idea of performing every basic operation quickly and also accurately, all without too much hassle. So, pretty much like scientific calculators were built to make it easier to do specific things more quickly (because of course you could use a lookup table or even calculate that stuff yourself, but that would waste your valuable time). So what I mean by this is that the Arithmometer (or pinwheel calculator) was actually the scientific calculator of its time... and I have a few of them too btw. Love your videos, they keep giving me ideas about what I might like adding to my collection next! :D

[@otiselevator7738]

Very professional interpretation of this interesting machine. ‘guess I’m going to have to subscribe.

[@bss1250]

The Monroe calculators are a modified stepped drum design. Each column has two drums, one with 4 stepped teeth and one with 5 equal length teeth. Numbers entered on the keyboard below 5 use only the 4 toothed drum, numbers above 5 use both drums. Thanks for the video, as an owner of 2 Brunsviga model A's it was nice to get a look at the model B

[@douro20]

The thing about Brunsviga wasn't quite right. Odhner already had a factory in his native Sweden and he tried to expand his production into central Europe by opening a factory in Braunschweig in 1891. Due to difficulty in managing two factories so distant from each other, he ended up selling the factory to Grimme, Natalis & Co. a year later.

[@johneygd]

An amezing interesting mind blowing machine, must,ve been very complicated to design.

[@hughobyrne2588]

Yours was mounted on a piece of wood? That's the cheap version. The high-end ones has base plate of pre-famulated amulite.

[@calthemann]

What a wonderful machine. Does winding the handle backwards make it do subtraction/division as well?

[@ChrisStaecker]

Yes sir!

[@mwichary]

The typewriter keys were probably the earliest commercial buttons, and the first QWERTY/popular typewriter went on market in 1874. I’m not sure if Dorr Felt was influenced by the typewriter when making his first Comptometer, though - do you? (There was also the 1850 Parmelee calculator that had buttons… sort of… but I don’t think it amounted to much.)

[@mwichary]

(As far as I can find, as early as 1892 Comptometer was advertised as “operated by keys like a typewriter.”)

[@ChrisStaecker]

Yes you're right- I gotta check my sources on button history. I agree certainly the early adding machines were influenced by typewriters.

[@kevinf5354]

These machines do divisions too, and much easier than the Comptometer, maybe do another video explaining subtraction and division?

[@firstnamelastname7143]

Back when they could design and make things like this, out of real metal, hundreds of mechanical parts, and sell them for reasonable price and profit.

[@imrustyokay]

i wonder if you have any more adding machines in your collection?

[@ChrisStaecker]

I've got several more- hoping to make some more videos over the summer. Thanks for watching!

[@pamdemonia]

That looks like a joy to use! I love old machines like this, with lots of metal parts operating smoothly. Such a satisfying feeling.

[@omar7299]

If you don't mind me asking: how mush was yours and how mush a good one uf i want to by it today. And does the Russian/Soviet " flex " one any different . Ps: loving your videos ❤ enjoying every one of them.

[@ChrisStaecker]

I paid about $100, which I thought was a good price. I don't know anything about the "flex". Thanks for watching!

[@김진오-n3o]

thank for good video

[@FrankAnzalone]

Why was the 9 in 29874 red

[@ChrisStaecker]

I was going to discuss this but it ran too long- the counter doesn't carry, so it will give misleading answers if you ever crank 10 times in the same digit. I think the red 9 is like a warning- don't crank it again or else weird things will happen with the counter. There is a full set of red digits used when subtracting- if you add past the red nine the counter will advance to a red eight, which almost certainly isn't what you want to see.

[@jedi1357]

The red numbers are for subtraction so you don't see complement numbers. The 0 and the 9 are shared by both addition and subtraction.

[@DanDart]

There's something wrong with 1:07...

[@senorverde09]

$$$ CURRRTAAAA $$$

[@Vallee152]

I once saw a curta for sale for just $800, I regret not buying it edit: yes, it was in working condition

[@ChrisStaecker]

Nice! I’ve never seen one in real life…

[@someonespadre]

Former employer had one in a storage closet in nearly mint condition. Maybe they bought a case around 1970 then this one never got deployed because of electronic calculators, just guessing. They did fail under daily use in the field so a ready supply would be helpful. One of my early bosses told me dirt would get in them and they would stop working. Maybe in an office they would last years but they were favored for field use so enough windy dusty days eventually problems would occur. That’s the only one I’ve seen in person.

[@emreturkmen2389]

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[@tonyennis1787]

mmm. Lettuce.