NEW CALCULATING MACHINE. [From the Argus)

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 234, 25 July 1872, Page 6

NEW CALCULATING MACHINE. [From the Argus )

There is at the office of the National Mutual Life Association, corner of Collins street and Market street, one of those beautiful calculating machines which' have come into use in England within the last two or three years. It has been imported by Mr Temp'.eton, the actuary, for working out the difficult sums in arithmetic which seem to be part of the daiiy routine of an insurance office or a building society. It is serviceable chiefly for multiplying and dividing, but it can also add and substract. Outwardly it resembles a musical box. When the lid is lifted, the uppsr face i 3 found to be divided into eight columns of figures, with an opening down the side of each column, for the passage up or down of a button. The figures in each column run from 0 up to 9.

Suppose that the operator wishes to set out any sum up to tens of millions, he begins with the right-hand column, which stands for units, and places a button opposite to the given figure, and so on with the respective columns of tens, hundreds, &c. Above the top 3of the columns there are two horizontal rows of holes, like the air-holes in a concertina. The operator sets his sum out on the face of the columns, turns a handle

at the right-hand side of the instrument, and the required answer is recorded on the upper horizontal row. The under row has a different use : it records the number of turns

given to the handle, when any particular hole in the row is brought exactly over any given column. If it be a sum in multiplication — say to ascertain the square of a number consisting of five figures, the sum is marked out by means of the buttons upon the columns. Then the operator, beginning with the right-hand column, turns the handles as many times round as the figure in the column contains units — for •ex»i»pkv four times for a 4; or five times "for a 5. - The product is shown in the corresponding hole in the upper row, unless it consist of more than one figure, when one figure is shown and the other carried forward. Then the top row, which slides at the will of the operator, is drawn one step, aud tho handle turned the number of times required by the figure in the second column ; the instrument duly adds the figure brought from the first column, if one has been carried, before recording the result. The same operation is repeated until the handle has been turned for each column. The inner workings of the machine, a series of wheels, axles, cranks, &c, seem most intricate on a first inspection, but the method of operation is most simple. A sum in multiplication or long division can be worked out in less than a minute, and the result depended upon to be perfectly accurate. For sums in addition it is slower than a human arithmetician would be ; but when 2U or 30 rows of figures have to be totted up, though the machine may be slow it is sure, and no "proof" is needed. The operator is told as he goes along whether he is doing the sum correctly or not. if one had to add up as larg3 a sum on paper, how many times might he not have to go over it to be sure that the total had been correctly arrived at ? For the computation of annuity tables, and for the ca'culation of sums at compound interest, the instrument i 3 an invaluable servant. It is named M. Thomas De Colmar s Arithmometer. The way to handle it can be learned in a few minutes with very little explanation, but the principle on which the •operations are carried out could not be set ' forth without the aid of diagrams. In stereotyped phraseology, the instrument ia a most •"ingenious contrivance."