Burkhardt-Weiss

Stepped drum machine

ca. 1880

Arthur Burkhardt dated the foundation of his calculating machine factory to 1878, but the production of his stepped drum machine probably started very slowly. Thus, in 1892 (14 years after its foundation!), Reuleaux reported that the completion of the 500th machine was imminent. While Burkhardt initially only supplied replicas of the Thomas machine, he soon made improvements to his products (see Hampel [2003]). These improvements were then also installed in older machines. In this respect, dating the machines on the basis of equipment details is extremely unreliable. The machine no. 29 found here indicates such subsequent additions: The stepped drum signet, the large wheel eraser of the result unit and revolution counter, the commas rail, the glued-in slip of paper with the operating instructions (provided with no. 212), the inscription of the switch lever; all of these are characteristics of later machines. In addition to the Burkhardt signet with the inscription Burkhardt Arithmometer, there is the inscription Friedrich Weiss Uhrmacher Wien. Presumably the machine was delivered by Burkhardt to the watchmaker in Vienna, who then sold it on. The idea was that watchmakers in particular were able to repair defects in a calculating machine. However, another possibility is that Friedrich Weiss bought the machine for his own use and affixed an ownership mark. Weiss developed a calculating machine based on the switching ratchet principle (FDM 7145), which was patented in Germany in 1893 (DE 73107). The improvements that Burkhardt made to his machines over the years were not patented; presumably he did not want to take on the effort involved. Only one patent from 1905 is known, which concerns a key setting in the setting mechanism (DE 189141). The machine is in any case an early document from the Burkhardt factory.