8 Mar
2013
8 Mar
'13
2:29 p.m.
Any early Burroughs experts here?
Yesterday I discovered a Burroughs "Style no. 3" adding machine in a
junk/antiques store (the kind of wonderful store where you have to dig
through stuff to get to more stuff, and when you get to that there's even
more stuff underneath/inside it :-)
Anyway, it's got the pedestal, side-desk and printing mechanism (at least I
assume that the gubbins at the back is a printer, although I couldn't
immediately see how it transfers to the paper - poss. just not visible with
the platen in the way). It seems to be basically the same as this one:
http://www.fi.edu/learn/sci-tech/adding-machine/adding-machine.php
... except:
1) it doesn't have the row of red/white keys across the top,
2) the desk on this one is much larger/nicer,
3) there's no ornate Burroughs script at the base of the keyboard area;
instead it says "Burroughs" and "center of type" above the keyboard,
4) the backing to the keyboard seems to be black (not green)
5) the keytop for the lower-left key on the keyboard is red (and a
little larger), not metal.
The mechanism seems free and cosmetically it's in pretty good shape,
considering that it's probably pushing 100 years in age - the main drawback
is that it's missing one of the '2' keys (the R/H side glass is cracked and
the rubber pads at the top of the pedestal have disintegrated, but both of
those problems should be solvable).
Immediate questions:
1) Any idea of age? s/n is 27434. I'm leaning toward 1906 as that seems to
be when the no. 3 showed up, and by October of that year there had been
some 40,000 of them built - but that's assuming that the serial numbers
don't carry across all models. I'm surprised if they built that many of
them before they were rendered obsolete by a newer model, though.
2) The lack of '2' key is really the main thing stopping me from bringing
this thing home. I expect they're common to many early Burroughs machines;
is anyone known to carry parts from junk machines, or has anyone succeeded
in creating a reproduction key using modern materials?
cheers
Jules