Idlers
In the 18th and 19th centuries, overviews were usually referred to as lazy people in tabular form, which contained conversions between different sizes, for example prices , quantities or weights , which were required for everyday use. Idlers could serve as a relief for difficult conversion ratios, especially with non-metric measurements, and could also be used by people who were not mathematically educated. The term house computer was also used synonymously .
Examples:
- The very lightest and always ready house calculator, that is, very easy way of calculating everything that happens at home, attached to it is the well-known, but never completely exposed, payment booklet, or the so-called idler . Finally, there follow comfortable, already calculated tables for interest, song wages, fruit, wine and weight, which, especially for those who are inexperienced in arithmetic, easily visualize everything that occurs in such matters or actions / From the author of the surveyor , Ulm 1774.
- Price calculation per cubic decimeter (wood tables or reduction tables of round wood according to cubic content in metric dimensions. An indispensable manual for foresters, timber merchants, foremen , joiners , carpenters and forest owners; with a lazy man , containing the calculation of prices, Ulm 1872. ( "Loafers containing the calculation of prices per cubic decimeter from 1/4 to 3 Kreuzer, from 1 pfennig to 1 silver groschen"))