Tales of Things

Tim Unitas

The Tim Unitas is a stepped drum, Leibniz-type mechanical calculator built around 1909 by Ludwig SPITZ from Berlin. Tim is short-hand for "Time Is Money".
It is a very heavy 4 species calculator, with multiplication done by repeated additions and division by repeated subtractions. Movement of the carriage has to be made manually, by lifting it up using the big knob on the left side of the carriage and sliding it one position to the left or to the right. The machine is shown at the Computarium of the LCD (http://computarium.lcd.lu).
"Stepped drum" = "Staffelwalze" = "tambour à dents inégales"

Created by: fmassen on 28 Apr 2010, 7:29 a.m.