Mercedes-Euklid
More info
- Creator
- Christel Hamann
- Released
- 1905 (Model VII 1913)
- Type
- Mechanical calculating machine
- Manufacturer
- Mercedes Büromaschinen-Werke, Zella-Mehlis
The calculating machine that could divide without the operator cranking and keeping count — and did it with a drive mechanism all its own.
Christel Hamann in Berlin designed the machine in 1905, and Mercedes Büromaschinen-Werke in Zella-Mehlis manufactured it from the following year. The novelty was in the drive: a proportional lever whose pivot point shifts, so that one turn of the crank produces a stroke proportional to the digit set. Leibniz's stepped drum and Odhner's pinwheel solve the same problem with toothed wheels; Hamann's answer was quieter and tolerated being run fast.
The Model VII of 1913 is generally reckoned the first mass-produced calculator with fully automatic division. You set the dividend and divisor, pulled once, and the machine handled the subtractions and carriage shifts itself until the quotient stood in the register. Before that, division was a manual procedure in which the operator counted crank turns and tracked the digits in their head. The machine became standard equipment in European computing bureaux between the wars — which is to say, on the desks where human computers worked out astronomy and ballistics by hand.