Ernst Martin: The Calculating Machines (Die Rechenmaschinen): Their History and Development (1925/1992)

This final volume in the Charles Babbage Institute Reprint series brings to light an extremely rare German account of the calculating machine industry in the first quarter of this century when the use of office machines became common in American and European business, government, and science.

Ernst Martin wrote Die Rechenmaschinen to address the issues and questions that the public had raised about the many calculating devices that were appearing on the market in the early 1920s. His little book is, in fact, a developmental history of calculating machines in catalog form – invaluable for collectors of old machines. The introduction describes the seven major types of machines that had been produced by 1925. The corpus of the book consists of a running list of specific calculating machines, arranged by the date the device was first patented or produced.

Stephan Weiss maintains a list of comments and corrections of the book.

Originally published in German as Die Rechenmaschinen und ihre Entwicklungsgeschichte by Johannes Meyer, Pappenheim, 1925.
Translated and edited by Peggy Aldrich Kidwell and Michael R. Williams
Publisher MIT Press, 1992
Volume 16 of The Charles Babbage Institute reprint series for the history of computing
ISBN 0262132788, 9780262132787
367 pages

publisher
google books
via rechenmaschinen-illustrated.com

PDF
View online (web version; includes machines made after 1925; maintained by Herbert Schneemann and Walter Szrek)