(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Behold, the calculator,
but where did it come from?
Meet William Seward Burroughs,
born in New York in 1857.
William Seward Burroughs,
not to be confused
with his grandson, the
author William S. Burroughs,
spent his childhood in New York.
After school, he began
working as a bank clerk
until the harsh winters wore on his health
and sent him packing to warmer climates.
Even after moving to St. Louis,
William remembered his time at the bank,
especially those long monotonous hours
spent crunching numbers
and correcting mistakes.
There had to be a faster way
to perform basic calculations,
a way to automate arithmetic.
In 1888, it was official,
he invented the calculator.
This device looked more
like a cash register
than modern rectangular
scientific calculators.
While earlier patents
tackled the same idea,
William's design was the
first practical example
of an adding and listening machine.
It wasn't perfect, in fact,
users had to be careful with the original
lever operated machine.
If they didn't pull the lever correctly,
the machine would show different sums
for the same calculation.
Luckily for us, William stuck with it
and improved the design.
In 1886, he helped form the
American Arithmometer Company.
By 1926, they changed their name
to the Burroughs Adding Machine Company
and made around one million devices.
