JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post 

I noticed three interesting devices in just a few dozen pages of each other in Popular Mechanics for 1916. The first was a calculating monkey adding machine/toy for kids–this is something I had never seen before and had I been aware of it 30 years ago I certainly would’ve used it in my store. The “toy” is actually pretty sophisticated, as it will add and subtract, multiply,divide, and extract square roots, which was more powerful than any machine I needed at the time for the store.  

The next piece of machinery was this Napier’s Bones-like device intended for kindergarten use. The device on the left uses a set of movable wooden strips with the alphabet printed on them; so by sliding the strips you can produce a simple or complex word, the result displayed in the open line of the rectangular piece of wood that holds the whole thing together. On the right is a set of strips with words on therm–used in the same fashion, the child could select a series of words to make simple sentences.  I like these two devices immensely,  (Unfortunately I have no information on this or the calculating monkey.)

The third item is a wonderful device, though this one not for kids–it is an electric automatic typewriter, punching out letters from a piano scroll-like master copy fed into a receiving typewriter. (Again, no manufacturing info here, and I don’t know how the typewriter would have responded to page breaks.)