The purpose of Moses. & William Pullen’s Improved Calculating Machine was to add up and compute or ascertain the sum of a column or number of figures, regardless of whether the column or number of figures is related to abstract or tangible attributes.
Moses Pullen was born in Manchester in 1821. His youth and schooling are unknown. Moses’ son William Pullen was born in the Gloucestershire town of Painswick in 1856.
Moses Pullen was a one-year interim headmaster of Bentham Grammar School, resigning in May 1876. He was identified as a mechanic when he was 20 years old and living in Bolton in 1841.
Moses and William Pullen of High Bentham, near Settle, in the County of York, were issued Letters Patent in 1874 to invent a new or the improved machine for adding together and determining the total of a column or number of numbers.