J. T. Campbell Adding Machine

This U.S. Patent Office model for a finger-operated adding machine has four metal wheels set flat into a wooden case with a metal top (the fifth wheel is missing). Around the top edge of each wheel are ten short pins labeled clockwise from 0 to 9. Above each wheel is a round opening in the case. The edge of this opening is also labeled clockwise from 0 to 9. The mechanism linking the wheels is out of order. The patent tag is tied to the machine. It reads: 24.990 (/) J.T. Campbell (/) Adding Mch. (/) Patented August 9, (/) 1859.

John T. Campbell also took out patents for an "Improvement in Portable Fence," U.S. Patent 63,853, April 16, 1867; an “Improvement in Lifting-Tongs,” U.S. Patent 130,194, May 1, 1877; and a 'Revolving Cultivator," U.S. Patent 329137, October 27, 1885.

According to U.S. Census records and a biographical account, Campbell was born in 1833. Raised near a saw mill in Parke County, Indiana, he worked variously as a carpenter, a surveyor and engineer, and a hotelkeeper. During the Civil War, he organized an infantry regiment to fight for the Northern cause. Captain Campbell was disabled by a war wound. On his return, he obtained various local and state offices. By 1880 he had moved to Indianapolis, where he worked briefly as a clerk in the Indiana State Bureau of Statistics. He then retired to Parke County.

References:

U.S. Patent 24990, August 9, 1859.

A. T. Andreas, Atlas Map of Parke County, Indiana, Chicago, Illinois: by the author, 1874, p. 29.

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