The Bair-Fulton Arithmetician Calculator No. 6

Bair-Fulton Calculators are a clever variation of the Addiator type of slide adder in which the sliders are replaced by geared dials. They were made from 1935 till the early 1940s.
For more information about this and other machines in my collection, please visit my website:
www.jaapsch.net/mechcalc/
0:00 Introduction
0:40 Joseph Hershey Bair
2:04 Addiators, addition
3:50 Addiators, subtraction
4:26 Bair-Fulton, addition
6:29 Bair-Fulton, subtraction
7:01 Clearing
7:35 More history
8:06 Outro

[@aydink7739]

I like the fact that your software polyform puzzler played a role in finding a aperiodic monotile (Einstein) 👏🏽

[@stephenfreeborn]

Looks good. What a unique design.

[@HanhanPx]

This is probably the most beautiful calculator I have ever seen

[@GillAndBurtTheCop]

Have you ever seen a human brain?

[@HanhanPx]

@@GillAndBurtTheCop it's moist and squishy

[@emdxemdx]

:) I remember playing with an addiator-like calculator (Magic Brain?) more than 50 years ago, and around the same time, I had a teacher who had a miniaturized plastic version of the Pascaline. I recall understanding instantly how it worked.

[@DavidFrostbite]

I really like how compact the Addiator is for a fully mechanical thing

[@ChrisStaecker]

Very cool design- I'd seen pictures of these but I never looked closely and assumed it was like a typical dial machine.

[@jaapsch2]

To be honest, so did I until I saw a photo of the No. 11 desk model (seen also in the ad at 07:48) which has three rows of dials, and grooves for the stylus connecting the left of one row to the right of the row above it.

[@tylerg8305]

Excellent video. I love your channel. Thanks for what you do.

[@TaramiBedona]

Really appreciate the cleverness of the mechanism but yes it is a bit of a solution looking for a problem. It reminds me of what we In software engineering call the XY problem (or fallacy);: How can I do X (implement a slide adder) using Y (a dial mechanism)? The answer is that you probably shouldn't; you design a traditional dial adder instead. Enjoyable video as usual, thanks 😊

[@robertg8331]

Gosh, what an unusual mechanism - thank you for showing this one. Very ingenious (if ripple-carry is the main daily task). (My first reaction btw was; golly, where do you find these things!? :-)

[@jaapsch2]

I got this one on eBay from another collector. It was not cheap, cause due to its rarity it is one of the few that costs many times more now than when it was new.

[@speedydai8929]

So no one’s going to talk about how 92+9 isn’t 202? What caused the skip?

[@topaz-rn]

Good catch, idk either

[@davidmason5163]

Hadn't reset properly.

[@artkek]

Shouldn't it be 101? Where'd you grab another 100 from?

[@jaapsch2]

Oh dear. It did get to 201 instead of 101. What is happening here is that the two dials slightly rub against one another and just turning the tens dial caused the hundreds dial to click one step further.

[@365Condoms]

clip your nails, dude

[@jaapsch2]

Why should I? They are useful.

[@365Condoms]

@@jaapsch2 don't want to konw :) nice video though