Triumphator Calculating Machine

This lever-set pinwheel non-printing calculating machine has a steel frame painted black with eight metal pinwheels and a wooden base. Rotating the pinwheels forward using levers that extend from the wheels sets a number. No digits are inscribed on the frame next to the rotating pinwheels to show the entry, but these digits do appear in a row of windows above the pinwheels. Rotating a wing nut on the left side zeros the entry register.

The carriage at the front of the machine has ten windows for the revolution counter on the left and 18 windows for the result register on the right. Wing nuts at opposite ends of the carriage rotate to zero these registers. To release the carriage, one pushes down a lever at the front. A crank with a wooden knob on the right side of the machine rotates clockwise for addition and multiplication and counterclockwise for subtraction and division. The revolution register and the result register have one sliding decimal marker each. The revolution register on this machine has no carry.

A mark on the top of the machine reads: No 464. A mark on the front (with quotation marks after the German style) reads: “Patent” (/) Rechenmaschine (/) Triumphator. A mark on the back reads: Sole Manufacturers (/) Leipziger Röhrenwerke G.m.b.H. (/)Leipzig-Lindenau (/) Aurellenstr. 56 (/) PATENTED.

The machine is from the collection of Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Company. The Triumphator was manufactured in Leipzig, Germany, from about 1904.

Reference:

E. Martin, The Calculating Machines (Die Rechenmaschinen), trans. P. A. Kidwell and M. R. Williams, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992, pp. 144–146.

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