The Millionaire Calculating Machine:

History

Designed by Otto Steiger, a Swiss engineer, it was first patented in Germany in 1892. Patents were issued in France, Switzerland, Canada and the USA in 1893. The production which started in 1893 was handled by Hans W. Egli of Zürich.

The Millionaire is generally acknowledged as the first commercially-successful calculating machine which could perform multiplication directly rather than by repeated addition. These pages give an illustrated technical description of its internal mechanism and its principles of operation.

The Millionaire mechanism was developed during the early 1890s by Otto Steiger, a Swiss citizen living in Munich. His German Patent 72870 of 1892 describes a machine which uses a mechanical representation of the multiplication table to form partial products, in the same way that a human \\\\\\\'calculator\\\\\\\' uses a multiplication table committed to memory. The partial products are then transferred via a \\\\\\\'transmitting mechanism\\\\\\\' to a \\\\\\\'combining and registering mechanism\\\\\\\' for display to the operator.

Steiger\\\\\\\'s design was taken up by engineer Hans W Egli of Zurich, who made numerous changes and improvements as he developed the machine for production. The first \\\\\\\'Millionaire\\\\\\\' was sold in 1893, with more than 4000 units following over the next 30 years.

The Millionaire was distributed in Australia by the firm of Peacock Brothers, although imports were disrupted by the 1914-18 war. The machines were widely used in applications requiring frequent multiplication and division, especially in the insurance industry, the mining industry, and the railways. The Millionaire could not be surpassed for rapid and reliable multiplication until the fully-automatic rotary calculators became available in the mid to late 1930s. Unfortunately, the supply of these new machines in Australia was limited by import restrictions during the 1939-45 war, with the result that many Millionaires in this country continued in active service well into the 1950s.

The Egli firm went on to develop an automatic division machine (the MADAS) in 1913, and a full-keyboard rotary calculator (the Portable MADAS) in 1931. Design details from Steiger\\\\\\\'s original patents can still be seen in the MADAS calculators of the 1960s.

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