Dorr Eugene Felt

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dorr Eugene Felt (born March 18, 1862 in Newark or Beloit (other source) ( Wisconsin ), † August 7, 1930 in Chicago ) was an American inventor and industrialist.

biography

Felt was the son of Eugene Kincaid Filz (a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly ) and Elizabeth Filz. In 1878 he trained in a mechanical engineering company in Beloit. In 1880 he learned the French language. In 1882 he moved to Chicago and worked there as a foreman of a rolling mill.

Ten-digit Victor comptometer

In 1884 he developed the prototype of a new calculating machine . He became known through this first calculator, which only worked with keys as a comptometer instead of, for example, slip wheels. Together with the businessman Robert Tarrant , he founded the Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Company on January 25, 1889 , which was an important company in the pocket calculator industry until the mid-1970s.

After that, Felt invented other devices. He has acquired 46 domestic and 25 foreign patents.

In 1919 he acquired several hundred acres on Lake Michigan between Holland and Saugatuck and built a Shore Acres Farm there with the Dorr E. Felt Mansion from 1925/28.

Felt was married to Agnes McNulty and had four children.

Awards

  • 1889: John Scott Medal from the Franklin Institute
  • The original macaroni box prototype and the first Comptograph sold are exhibited in a collection of antique pocket calculators.

Works

  • Mechanical arithmetic or the history of the counting machine . Chicago: Washington Institute, 1916.
  • (with Alfred L. Holman): A register of the ancestors of Dorr Eugene Felt and Agnes (McNulty) Felt. Chicago: Priv. print. for DE Felt, 1921.

literature

  • WW Johnson: Scars on My Hands: The Life of Dorr Eugene Felt, Inventor and Industrialist .

Web links

Commons : Dorr Felt  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.ithistory.org/db/companies/felt-tarrant-manufacturing-company
  2. ↑ Chase, GC (July 1980). History of Mechanical Computing Machinery. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Volume 2, Number 3. Arlington, VA: The American Federation of Information Processing Societies
personal data
SURNAME Felt, Dorr Eugene
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American inventor and industrialist
DATE OF BIRTH March 18, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Newark or Beloit
DATE OF DEATH August 7, 1930
Place of death Chicago