Michael Bouchet

Michael Bouchet from Louisville, Kentucky, USA, was a holder of two USA patents for single-column adding devices (known also as single digit adders)—Patent No 251823, 314561 from 1882 and Patent No 314561 from 1885. Actually the second device is improved version of the first. Later on Bouchet deeded 1/3 of the rights of the second patent 314561 to M. F. Madden, owner of the company M. F. Madden & Co of Louisville, Kentucky, which produced and sold (for 15 $ each, quite a reasonable price for this time) devices by the name Madden Adding Machine (see the photo below).

Madden Adding Machine from 1887 (Courtesy Nico Baaijens, www.calculi.nl)

The nine keys for entering of the numbers are arranged in two rows and are attached to the levers, which have from 1 to 9 teeth. When a key is pressed, these teeth will be engaged with the openings of a rod, which is placed to the length of the box, and the rod will be rotated to an angle, according to the number of the teeth. To this rod is attached a digital wheel. The tens carry mechanism can perform a carry to the second and third wheel, so the result mechanism is 3-positioned with the maximum value of 999.

The patent drawing of the Bouchet's machine

This will be the last single column adding machine (single digit adder), which will be examined as a separate device in this site. After the two key-operated calculating machines, invented in Europe (see Luigi Torchi and Jean-Baptiste Schwilgué), there are a number of patents issued in the United States on machines of this class, besides the devices of Parmelee from 1850 and Winter from 1859, already examined in this site.

Let's mention only W. Robjohn (1872), D. Carroll (1876), Borland & Hoffman (1878), P. C. Forrester (1881), A. Stettner (1883), Spalding (1884), L. M. Swem (1885), P. T. Lindholm (1886) and others. All of these machines varied in construction, but not in principle. Some were really operative and others inoperative, but all lacked what may be termed useful capacity. Some of them are even preserved to the present time (see the photos below).

Such machines, of course, never became popular because of their limited capacity, which required many extra movements and caused mental strain without offering an increase in speed of calculation as compared with expert mental calculation.

It seems strange that up to 1887 the only operative key-driven machines were single-digit adders and nobody managed to invent and produce a multi-column device. It is folly to think that all these inventors never had the thought or wish to produce such a machine. It is more reasonable to believe there was not one of them, who did not have the wish and who did not give deep thought to the subject. There is every reason to believe that some of them tried it, but there is no doubt that if they did it was a failure, or there would be evidence of it in some form.