Ancelli

Odhner vs Friden

Hello, i disagree :-)

As you can read in page you quoted, "Carl Friden, who sold Marchant an original design for a modified pin-wheel mechanism. Instead of individual pins on the rotor, Friden's design uses a sliding gear segment which extends and retracts at the appropriate times to advance the register by the required number of positions" You can see it in http://v3.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/mosaics?CC=US&NR=1476197A&KC=A&FT=D&date=&DB=&locale=

For an observer, the main difference is that in Odhner-like machines, cursors rotate when crank rotate. Instead in a Friden-Marchant machine cursors don't move. This allows to apply white and red pins on the cursors ;-)

First Marchant machines was produced with Odhner pinwheel. Pony was initially Odhner. Last Pony production, XL, XLA and first keyboard machines had Friden's mechanism

Two mechanism are somewhere similar, not identical! Then i think that Marchant XLA is a very interesting machine, but not the "better" example of Odhner-like machine ;-) --Ancelli (talk) 20:17, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

What I don't understand is why you don't contribute by creating a new paragraph named Variant and explain to the rest of the world what you have kept for remarks and discussions.

This Marchant calculator belongs to the class of Odhner type calculators whether you like it or not (unless you feel that it's a new class of calculator by itself)!

Did you really contribute to the article by inserting a second picture of an Original Odhner machine !?

Ezrdr (talk) 14:55, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Hello, i don't write articles in en.wiki just because English is not my native language. I can just make little interventions and informal discussions.

Odhner pinwheel was the leader idea in the domain of calculators with a variable number of active teeth, not the only one. The first was Giovanni Poleni, who in Miscellanea (1709) described a similar, not accomplished, machine. Another precursor was Izrael Abraham Staffel, but i know very few about him. Frank Stephen Baldwin patented in US a similar machine, independently (may be before) Odhner, but he didn't succeed. He became the co-funder and main designer of Monroe Calculator Company Some Monroe machines had a mechanism derived from first Baldwin idea. Carl Friden developed his project to save Marchant from legal issues for patent infringement (see http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,796216,00.html). In Germany, Christel Hamann designed another very successful non-rotating-cursor mechanism for De-Te-We machines (Rechenmaschinen-illustrated.com. All these machines are somewhere similar to Odhner idea, but different!

Vice-versa, a lot of other machines are strictly related to Odhner. Simply consider that he had to call his company "Original Odhner" :-)) Almost all images in Commons Category: Odhner_type, but Marchant and (may be) Walther WSR160, are actually based on Odhner pinwheel.

The main company was Brunsviga. They started working under Odhner license, but they developed their own improvements (by Franz Trinks) and became the leader in Europe. In the article where are some other company names. We could add Toshiba (Japan), Jion-Calculadoras (Mexico), Antares and Esacta (Italy), Dactyle and Vaucanson (France), Famosa (Spain), Rapid Calculator in US (http://www.ameripak-ops.com/history.html ), .... a too long list ;-)

I would just uggest to remove Muldivo. This company was mainly a reseller of re-labelled German machines (Thales, Walther). Just for a while they continued production of Guy machines. --Ancelli (talk) 22:14, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Your English is perfectly alright, I'm also a non native writer, I get corrected all the time (in French too) and it's OK with me. Go ahead, contribute, but remember that this is an Encyclopedia, not a PhD thesis, you're supposed to distill the essence of the subject not write a 500 pages book. Educate but do not teach!

Now look at Willgodt Theophil Odhner, Pinwheel calculator and Odhner Arithmometer, see what's missing or incorrect and see what you contribute. Cheers,

Ezrdr (talk) 14:02, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

January 2014

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