Arithmometer - Legacy

Legacy

Because it was the first mass marketed and the first widely copied calculator, its design marks the starting point of the mechanical calculator industry, which eventually morphed into the electronic calculator industry and which, through the accidental design of the first microprocessor to be commercialized, the Intel 4004, for one of Busicom's calculator in 1971, led to the first commercially available personal computer, the Altair in 1975.

Its user interface was used throughout during the 120 years that the mechanical calculator industry lasted. First with its clones and then with the Odhner Arithmometer and its clones, which was a redesign of the arithmometer with a pinwheel system but with exactly the same user interface.

Over the years, the term Arithmometer or parts of it have been used on many different machines like Odhner's Arithmometer, the Arithmaurel or the Comptometer, and on some portable pocket calculating machines of the 1940s. Burroughs corporation started as the American Arithmometer Company in 1886. By the 1920s it had become a generic name for any machine based on its design with about twenty independent companies manufacturing Thomas' clones like Burkhardt, Layton, Saxonia, Gräber, Peerless, Mercedes-Euklid, XxX, Archimedes, etc.