Burroughs Style 13 Adding Machine

This full-keyboard printing manual adding machine has a black metal body with a glass front. The mechanism is metal, as is the collapsible stand attached to the left side, the crank on the right side, and the stand. The knob on the crank is wooden. There are 13 columns of plastic-topped keys, each with nine keys. The leftmost column of keys is black, the next three columns white, the next column red, the next three columns black, the next three columns white, and the two rightmost columns are black. Once one key in a column is depressed, a second key in that column cannot be depressed. Above these is a tenth row, 12 columns wide, of red correction keys. One can read up to nine-digit entries on a display visible through the glass front. The 12-1/4”-wide carriage and the paper tape are at the back and not visible to the operator. The error and repeat keys are to the right of the keyboard with a non add key and two other interconnected keys on the left. The portion of the frame immediately below the keys is covered with green felt.

The machine is marked at the base of the front: STYLE No. 13. It is marked on a metal tag below this: No 13 71235. The Burroughs Style 13 was manufactured from 1906 until 1912.

African American civil servant and inventor Shelby Davidson (1868-1931) hoped to introduce a modified version of this machine for work at the U.S. Post Office. For details, see the work of Rayvon Fouché cited.

Reference:

Rayvon Fouché, Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation: Granville T. Woods, Lewis H. Latimer, and Shelby J. Davidson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, esp. pp. 125-168.

Currently not on view