Consul, The Educated Monkey

Consul, The Educated Monkey is an educational toy that performs small multiplications. If you point the monkey's feet at two numbers, its fingers point to their product. To multiply a number by itself the second foot should point to the square symbol. This is a replica, but it was originally produced from 1916 to the early twenties. It is named after a real animal that performed on stage at the time.
The photo of Consul on the ship came from this blog post:
blog.hnf.de/im-banne-des-rech...
For more information about this and other machines in my collection, please visit my website:
www.jaapsch.net/mechcalc/
0:00 Introduction
0:21 The real Consul
1:00 History of the toy
1:58 How to use
3:58 Mechanical linkage
6:01 Outro

[@gregreynolds5686]

Such a simple yet ingenious mechanism - thanks for sharing.

[@TheOldMundane]

Excellent video, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks for the all the work you've done.

[@Liboo52]

Thank you for making this! I just received one of these as a gift and I’m so happy to know more about it!

[@stephenfreeborn]

I do love smoking Consul. Very on point for the time.

[@ChrisStaecker]

Id never seen the photo of Consul with the cash register- very nice. Do you have Mr Smart? Seems harder to find... I don't have either. Why are they always monkeys?

[@jaapsch2]

I don't have any other variants on this theme. I found this one at a flea market and couldn't pass it by, but these don't really hold my interest. This one is fun though just because of the history. By the way about that photo, the Consul that visited the NCR plant in September 1910 was not actually the same Consul that made the Atlantic crossing. The latter died earlier in March and was replaced. They must have had an understudy ready that could take his place within just a few months. This had happened 6 years earlier with the previous Consul too.

[@friiq0]

It makes no difference to the monkey! Probably because the monkey is more interested in finding the product! 😉

[@eliotlong5184]

Do you know if the center square travels in a precisely straight line, or a linear approximation by an arc of large enough radius? It seems like it would be the latter, unless my logic is wrong

[@jaapsch2]

It is a straight line. I proved that the hinges at the feet and the hands form a triangle with fixed angles (similar in shape to the fixed triangle of the foot/elbow/neck hinges of the leg piece). Therefore if you move for example the right foot, the square window moves in a straight line as the triangle's left side extends.

[@eliotlong5184]

​@@jaapsch2 Ahhh that makes sense, thank you for the explanation.

[@ChrisSmith-wh6bq]

This sounds like one for Karl Pilkington.