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The Heavy Number Crunchers: Table-Top Edition

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

Bollee

This was a surprise, finding M. Bollee’s article (Sur une nouvelle machine a calculer) in the issue of an 1889 Comptes Rendus spread out in front of me, pecking around in that big 10-pound volume looking for something else not Bollee.  It was very easy to miss this article if you weren’t looking for it, just a few pages long in a 1000-page book.  But there it was, nestled comfortably in pp 737-739.  It these few pages Bollee describes his machine and with particular reference to his innovative approach to direct multipilication–a fine addition (ha!) to the long line of contributions by Babbage and Clement, Scheutz, Wiberg and Grant and Hamann. 

Notes:

Léon Bollée: “Sur une nouvelle machine a calculer”, in Comptes Rendus de l’Academie Sciences (Paris), volume 109, 1889, pp. 737-9.  Offered in the original printed wrappers, removed from a larger bound volume.  

An image of the machine from The Manufacturer and Builder:

Bollee

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