Burroughs Calculator Review / HowTo

The Burroughs Calculator, from the 1920s.
This is episode 3 of my video series about calculating devices.
PDF of The Book Of The Burroughs: faculty.fairfield.edu/cstaeck...
Chris Staecker webarea: faculty.fairfield.edu/cstaeck...

[@candrew8417]

Takes me back. You confused me with muffers. . . 'mfrs' until I realised you were referring to the standard abbreviation for manufacturers.

[@the8ctagon]

In case you were wondering "Burroughs? Any relation?" Yes, William Burroughs (wife-shooter, author of Junkie and The Naked Lunch, Father Tom in Drugstore Cowboy) was the grandson of the founder of the Burroughs Corporation, which manufactured these things.

[@joehopfield]

The carry completely broke me. Perfection. I'd want the clear to do the same.

[@crowznest438]

What an interesting video! I have a quite senior friend that was trained to use a Burroughs during WWII for the railroad, after the men went off to war and women got those jobs while they were gone, and had to give them up when the men came back so the men could feed their families. (She said that most women didn't mind giving up the jobs when the men returned because they wanted to get married, anyway.)

[@matthewblalock4916]

You know how the paint is missing from your keys? You can use crayons to add the color back to the keys. Use s black crayon for the white keys and a white crayon for the black keys. I found that little trick out when I got my adding machine. I hope this helps!

[@chrishejl1]

This episode is hilarious

[@bridgettbaron9339]

I enjoyed this video a little too much. 😂 Thanks for making it!

[@der.Schtefan]

Very nice video. Very nice audio.

[@teslasulu6305]

Hello All! I really hope someone can help with this question: Just above the numbers in the windows is a horizontal ledge. On that ledge are 3 brackets that look as though they may slide above different numbers. Are these part of some mechanism that you can activate to prevent numbers from carrying over? I know that the Felt and Tarrant Comptometer has little pulls or pushes above each window. I would really appreciate an answer if anyone knows. Thank you so much!

[@ChrisStaecker]

Those things are messed up on my machine, but they don't do anything to the mechanism. They can slide back and forth along that ledge, and are positioned to help the user remember where the decimal point is supposed to be, or to separate out two separate numbers being held on different parts of the readout. But they're purely for the user's reference- they don't actually do anything to effect the mechanism.

[@someonespadre]

It’s not everyday that you get to see a Master Numbersman practicing his craft. Prior to electronic calculators a “calculator” was a person who calculated things. Jaap Scherfuis explained that the number to subtract is subtracted from 1000 (if 3 place) then added to the first number. So I played with a paper Comptometer style calculator and figured out the first number on the right always is subtracted from 10 then subsequent numbers are subtracted from 9 due to borrowing. This is why the right most number has to move up 1. Basically all the numbers are 9 complement’s except the rightmost which is a 10 complement. This method results in an extra 1 on the left unless the operator interrupts the carry.

[@MattMcIrvin]

I was just thinking about the fact that these use a 9s complement for subtraction (e.g. the little 9 is on the 0 key), but the Troncet slide adder uses a 10s complement (9 corresponds to 1). Took me a while to figure out the reason for the distinction. It's because the Troncet is actually making you do the logical equivalent of a time-reversed addition, without actually making you slide the sliders the other way--you can do a different motion for the carry. Whereas this kind of adding machine can only do the kind of carry associated with addition, so 9s complement plus some weird special case at the end is the way to make that work for subtraction. You could do the same thing on a Troncet adder but it'd be extra awkward.

[@robertlozyniak3661]

Oh, about the "method of complements": if you do it as you described it, then your answer will be too low by 1. So, you have to add that 1 in at the end.

[@MattMcIrvin]

Modern computers represent negative numbers this way, but in binary: to represent -x, you take the complement of the bit representation of x and add 1. Then adding that will do the same thing as subtracting x (the addition just overflows at the left end).

[@ntilewills5679]

Oh man who did the ending song? I could listen to that for a while.

[@ChrisStaecker]

Me!

[@donaldlampert331]

yours is in really nice condition! It is a speedy one ......wow,

[@ChrisStaecker]

Yeah- wish I had the handle though.

[@olivialambert4124]

You can be sure if this was invented today it would be called the iAdd. I much prefer the name it has.

[@NickSayers]

Muffers!! ❤️

[@Virtue2721]

how do you divide

[@ChrisStaecker]

Division is not an easy operation on a machine like this. Here is another of my videos which shows how it was done: kzbin.info/www/bejne/d52qk5Wim52Xm8k

[@ClassicFIHD]

3 weeks I saw one of these at an auction.

[@coreyeatsdetroit9733]

What's the value of this machine?

[@ChrisStaecker]

I got mine in 2015 on ebay for $40 including shipping. In retrospect this seems a bit high since it's missing the crank. These machines are scarce, which you'd thik would make them expensive, but so few people want them and they're so expensive to ship that the prices stay low for most types.

[@coreyeatsdetroit9733]

Chris Staecker thanks for the info. I just picked one up in good physical and working condition and paid $20 for it. Just wondered if I got a good deal or not.

[@ChrisStaecker]

Sounds like a good deal to me- I'd hit that

[@johneygd]

I would ask at minimum $100 dollars for these unique antique machines as they will get more rarer each day, these says peoples throwing stuff away without thinking twice about it all because of the digital age☹️

[@hamdifouzai4713]

you still have no crank ?

[@ChrisStaecker]

Never did get one- but I sold the machine a few years back anyway.

[@ethanblack5642]

I comment to help statistics and

[@donluisguerra7286]

Muffers??????

[@ChrisStaecker]

Lotta muffers back then

[@chakravartisingh2748]

Yi Yi Yi