Alexander Rechnitzer
Alexander Rechnitzer (* around 1880 near Pressburg ; † April 1922 in New York ) was an Austro-Hungarian inventor in the field of calculating machines .
Life
Rechnitzer spent his youth in Vienna and was of Jewish descent. His talent for mechanics was shown early on . He built his first experimental calculating machine at the age of 19. In 1904 a patent was granted for an “automatic calculating machine”.
After studying at a technical university, presumably in Vienna, he stayed in Berlin , Vienna and New York between 1905 and 1909 . As early as 1906, the first electrically powered, fully automatic calculating machine called Autarith , based on Rechnitzer's patent, was demonstrated at a public fair in New York . It was manufactured by Keuffel & Esser, New York, in a pilot series of ten machines. There was no commercial success at that time due to a lack of demand. However, Rechnitzer worked nonstop to improve the machine.
Back in Europe, more prototypes were made, which devoured a lot of money that the inventor could borrow in Vienna. Here he founded Autarit Gesellschaft mbH in 1909 with a share capital of 220,000 crowns . In 1921 Rechnitzer traveled again to New York in order to have his machine, which has since become highly complex and equipped with a storage mechanism, commercially exploited. It also failed because Rechnitzer insisted on his overall concept and did not accept any preliminary compromises. Incidentally, there was meanwhile competition in Europe and the USA, machines made by Mercedes-Euklid , Monroe or Madas , which were used in Rechnitzer's division and multiplication mechanism. In a desperate manner, Rechnitzer ended his life in New York in 1922. His body was found in the East River and buried in the Potter's Field poor cemetery.
The autarith
Rechnitzer's calculating machine Autarith (sometimes referred to as Autarit in literature) was based on that of Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar . It had staggered rollers , two rows of setting slides for eight or nine places and a result window with number wheels to display a maximum of 16 places.
For addition , the summands had to be specified in the two rows of sliders , the machine had to be set to adding and the electric motor had to be started with approx. 45 W at the push of a button . The result was then read off on the number plates.
In subtraction mode, the larger number had to be set with the number wheels, the smaller one with the sliders. The number wheels were then automatically adjusted accordingly so that the result was visible.
The multiplication was done by setting the multiplicand with the number wheels and the multiplier with the sliders. In the calculation, turning a shaft increased the number wheels, with the slides one after the other moving towards zero, depending on the number of revolutions of the shaft. Once all the sliders had reached zero, the result could be read on the number wheels.
The division function mimicked dividing “by hand” as a sequence of subtractions.
The Autarith was able to calculate a 16-digit result in 12 to 20 seconds. Rechnitzer's last prototype has been missing since 1984; the machine from 1906 is in the Technical Museum in Vienna .
swell
- Reese, Martin: Autarith 1906. First electrically driven, fully automatic calculating machine in the world. In: "Historische Bürowelt" No. 91 (2013) see - IFHB .
- Records from the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution, Washington)
- George C. Chase: History of Mechanical Computing Machinery. Photo lecture from 1952. Printed in: Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 2, No.3, July 1980.
- www.rechenmaschinen-illustrated.com
- History of computers
- The Railway Age, December 15, 1905; P. 773 online at www.rechnerlexikon.de
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Rechnitzer, Alexander |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austro-Hungarian inventor in the field of calculating machines |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1880 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | near Pressburg |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 1922 |
| Place of death | new York |