I used to play with the one my grandparents owned. I now live in their old house and my daughter found it in the attic. I just started the process if restoring it. This video was my first step.

Looks like Victor was pretty forward thinking with their line of antimicrobial calculators. May the fallen giant rise again.

Just got my own Victor 200 adder yesterday. It even came with it's original black dust cover. Mine is quite dirty, but of course still works fine! You know that you can rejuvenate the ribbon, by taking it off, winding on one spool, and letting it sit overnight with WD-40 sprayed on it.......and it reactivates the ink. Good luck. Great vid!

@ChrisStaecker

7 жыл бұрын

I tried the WD-40 method once with no luck, but that was on a totally dry ribbon. Maybe it would work better on a partially dry one. I found it easier to just buy new ribbons for my other machines- they're cheap, and can be wound onto the spools pretty easy. Thanks!

@donaldlampert331

7 жыл бұрын

Chris Staecker Oh, sure it's better to get fresh ribbons and respooling is easy. Do you have typewriters also? I've got probably 70 or so..... it's fun

My late grandfather owned one in his clinic and I used to play with it all the time.

Another nice video. Thanks for making it. Re: the market for printing calculators. There is one, at least to judge by the number of different printing-calculators are still being sold by Victor, Canon, Casio, Sharp, and probably a couple of others I'm forgetting. I work in a business office. I'm on a computer all day long with Excel running, but there are times when I want to do something quickly but not in Excel. There are times when running a tape is useful. I sometimes have a stack of personal checks (people still write them), and when I batch them, I'll add them on the calculator and wrap the tape around them when I send them in, along with the deposit slip. Re: anti-microbial. I thought the same thing, but if you work in an office where a lot of people are sharing the same machines, an anti-microbial keyboard isn't such a bad thing. I wish our computer keyboards and telephones had that.

Cool video. It *is* amazing. This thing may still work long after the last electronic calculator ceases to function.

@ChrisStaecker

7 жыл бұрын

Thanks! Check out my channel for lots more like this-

An antimicrobial calculator is exactly what I need, I spend a lot of time in the cadaver zone. You can often find me doing sums in the cadaver zone.

You do good work Chris. Always enjoy your stuff. Thanks.

I like your style so much I'm going back through all of your "show and tell" videos to see how they've evolved. To my surprise, your style appeared fully-formed and matured right out of the womb. You are a natural. There are a lot of science communicators out there. Some of them are celebrities. You're going to become the first celebrity math communicator. A household name! Maybe more famous than that Norbert Wiener guy. Before you know it you'll be a guest on The View discussing tautochrone curves.

@ChrisStaecker

11 ай бұрын

My lighting and sound are a little better! Not much, but a little. (thanks)

Very good video sir. I enjoyed your take on all the subjects and how the victor will outlast us all. I too want to find a victor.

antimicrobial calculators are made of a material which bacteria can not grow on. Useful if you work in a hospital or biological laboratory, to minimize cross contamination.

What you have here is a series 3 Victor, or more specifically the model 310. I've been researching these early Victors a bit more as I recently got a series 2 machine. The series 2 did not have a separate subtotal button, but you could choose to do subtotals or totals by releasing or keeping down the Total button during the lever return stroke. The series 3 was released in 1924, had celluloid keytops instead of metal-rimmed ones, and has the three blue/red control buttons (including subtotal) on the left. In 1926 they introduced subtraction, and offered different sized registers. This is when they began using model numbers: the models 300/310/320 had 6/8/10 digits and no subtraction, while the 300S/310S/320S models did have subtraction.

@ChrisStaecker

2 ай бұрын

Thanks for this- my calling it the "200" was really a guess after some very slight research. Nobody should trust me over Jaap.

Thank you Sir for this video. Now we learned how this maschine works! We found the maschine 40 years ago in a trash container, at an U.S. airbase in Germany. Never knowing how old this one is...

Most droll delivery I think I've ever seen. Bravo sir.

Thank you I have a burroughs class 1 of 1907 and work fine too...

Great review, I enjoyed it.

@ChrisStaecker

7 жыл бұрын

Thanks! Lots more on my channel-

Really takes "crunching numbers" to a new meaning

Good job. Very entertaining- I have had the same thought about equipment 100 years ago working today, yet all the junk we spend money on today won't see 5 years of life. I have all of my fathers office equipment and if he were alive today he would be 102. And yes those calibrators are heavy. Keep up the good work.

@ChrisStaecker

6 жыл бұрын

Thanks for watching!! Good luck keeping your dad's stuff working-

Great video! I love antique machines like this! I have a collection of typewriters, and I also just bought my first antique adding machine. It's a Remington Rand model 93. It works mechanically, but has an electric motor. I think it might be from the 1930's or early 40's. I cleaned it and rewired it and got it running again. But I have no idea how to use it! It has a simple keyboard with just 10 keys for the numbers. I can get it to print the number I enter, but I'm not sure how to add and get a total. I'm doing something wrong!

@ChrisStaecker

7 жыл бұрын

Thanks for watching! I don't have a Remington Rand machine (yet). Some of those machines you would hit the add/total button once without any input in order to print the total. Like 12 + 35 = 47 would be 12 - total - 35 - total - total. Not sure about that model though. Congrats on getting it to work- I have bad luck with electrics.

@ct92404

7 жыл бұрын

Chris Staecker Well, unfortunately mine does still have some issues. Once in a while the motor struggles to crank the mechanism and it jams up for a couple of seconds. If that happens, I unplug it to let the motor cool. Also, the printing is still kind of faded even though I put in a new ribbon and cleaned the character slugs. The other weird thing is that if I try to get the total like you explained (which I think I did try before), the machine prints a big number. I think it just keeps adding to a running total that hasn't been cleared. There is a "correction" button, but I think that only clears what you just entered. Do you know how I completely clear the machine to start over with a new total? Or maybe there could be some kind of mechanical problems and it's not calculating? I hope not, because I wouldn't have the slightest clue how to fix that!

@ChrisStaecker

7 жыл бұрын

Yes the correction button will cancel your latest input, but only before you add it into the total- it's too late to cancel after you add. Typically the clearing to 0 is done automatically after the total is computed and printed. If there's a "subtotal" button this will print the total without zeroing. So if your totaling is messed up, you probably won't be able to clear either...

@ct92404

7 жыл бұрын

Chris Staecker There is definitely something wrong with the mechanism. I fixed the electrical problems and it cranks and prints, but it won't calculate at all. So I guess I'm just going to keep it as a display and a conversation piece to show my friends. It kinda sucks because I was really hoping to get it working again. At least I got the motor working again though. BTW, I'm watching your other videos too!

Bet your Brunsviga will still be spinnin' pinwheels in a hundred years too. Least if you keep it oiled and out of the rain ;-) . . . Nice video, again.

These things were built to LAST. This one still works perfectly, nearly 100 years after it was built. It's quite a simple mechanism and the technology was mature (the first adding machine dates to the 1850s, iirc). You said you would bet 200 years, I'd bet this will still work, maybe without the printer, in the year 2250.

@starfrost6816

5 жыл бұрын

However it depends on the matureness of the technology. I could probably build a replica of the TRS-80 (original microprocessor, sound chip, DRAM, etc) with modern manufacturing technologies and it would probably work fine for over 100 years.

Awesome

A pretty clever design.

My 1922 Monroe Model K still works perfectly.

good adding machine

My Burroughs keys all froze up! It is a 1950 type keyboard; adding button on top of right side. Can you help me?

Do you have any idea why columns 3-5 and column 7 of the digit keys have a white background, but all the other keys have a black background? Perhaps it's just to give the user a visual cue as to the numeric significance of each column e.g. columns 1 and 2 are cents, columns 3-5 are dollars up to 999 etc.

@ChrisStaecker

8 жыл бұрын

That's right- this was a standard coloring scheme on all the machines of the era. It's annoying if you're not trying to do 2 digits right of the decimal point, but these were intended almost exclusively for adding dollars & cents.

@adamkangas193

4 жыл бұрын

Absolutely correct!

Got lost here. I’m looking for the comptometer my company used in 1978. Can’t quite find the exact one.

Same here.

Hi Chris! I just bought a Victor McCaskey and it has the krank handle and there is a drawer that opens up underneath. Do you know if this is a cash register/combo? I cannot figure how to use it. But I can review your videos to see what info I can apply to get this machine to work. The handle works great and the drawer opens very easily. I have not found any info on this yet.

@ChrisStaecker

4 жыл бұрын

If it has a drawer, it sounds to me like a cash register. I've never used one myself that wasn't broken, so I'm not sure exactly. They're generally bigger / heavier / more expensive than standalone adding machines, so I've never acquired one.

@jameycollins725

4 жыл бұрын

@@ChrisStaecker Thank you for your quick response Chris!

@jaapsch2

2 ай бұрын

McCaskey did indeed make cash registers from Victor adding machines. I think they did it to other adding machine brands as well.

When he was typing the receipt numbers on the machine, I thought at one point he said, "19, (crank) 11, (crank) that in (crank)" I'm watching at double the speed so most of what I heard could have been numbers and phares like "19, (crank) 8, (crank) 82, pizza, (crank) more numbers, (crank) could have used a modern calculator, 60 (crank). Like like that."

So, mine has substraction, so it may be the 300,

Very True, and Dam Funny

I have an old underwood manual typewriter that is over 100 years old… It used to belong to my grandfather, he used to write letters to every sitting president from at least Truman all the way to Clinton

how'd you get teh baby to sneeze on the beat like that??

@ChrisStaecker

2 жыл бұрын

My kids are very supportive

Show me the Victor 300 adding machine!

@ChrisStaecker

5 жыл бұрын

I don't have the 300! See my other videos for the 600 & 700 though.

how do you devide?

@ChrisStaecker

3 жыл бұрын

I would say division is not possible on this type of machine. You could do repeated subtractions to simulate long division, but this machine is not even really meant to do subtractions. Some machines of the day shipped with "reciprocal tables", which was a big list of reciprocals of numbers written as decimals. Then to divide by, say, 27, you would look up the reciprocal of 27 in the list, and multiply by that reciprocal. This would be easier than trying to simulate a long division, since multiplication is at least in theory something that the machine can assist with.

Those anti microbials will be helpful againt covid

@mkpleco

3 жыл бұрын

I sorted to newest and I can see you beat me to this.

The change to the video style. No white background and a face. I do like see his face. Reminds me of director's style camera used in Nacho Libre and Napoleon Dynamite. The only thing it needs is a socially awkward body shot. The bike scene in ND and... hey in NL another bike scene. But the bike was a weird motor wheelchair and the specific scene I'm talking about is when Nacho and the other guy do a arm shake hold and they ride off with no words. Anyway the face camera was good but lingered for too long. Angry Video Game Nerd does thoses "talking to the camera" shots better. I would say learn and improve but the latest videos don't have any skin shots.

@ChrisStaecker

2 жыл бұрын

This was my very first video and I disliked the face shots so much that I didn’t try it again until video number 58! I’m still learning…

@Xyabra

2 жыл бұрын

I could tell this was an early video when you said "this is a great machine." A reviewer after XX amount of reviews under his or her belt wouldn't give something high praise without giving something real criticism. Keep up the great work. Maybe after all the adders are done, move onto pencil sharpers. Different machinery, still using cranks.

Lmao blue space milk

I don't get the point of antimicrobial calculators. Microbes already know how to multiply on their own.

@ChrisStaecker

2 жыл бұрын

HEYO!

I hate to dash all the hopes and dreams here about mechanical devices lasting for eons, but these machines have a number of weaknesses. Our father gave us one of these to my siblings and I and we readily destroyed its functionality in a few years, just playing with it, no external devices like hammers or other tools were involved. First, the mechanism under the buttons starts to fail, with buttons failing to pop back up, then the print ribbons and arms start to fail to rise or rotate, and then lastly the calculation arm eventually disconnects from the drive and flails uselessly. And we just used it, perhaps a bit too quick and enthusiastically, but we didn’t beat on it or drop it. So the search for mankind’s most durable legacy continues.

It's not an adding machine; it's a comptometer.

@ChrisStaecker

6 жыл бұрын

By the time this thing was released, the word "comptometer" was a brand name for the line of machines made by Felt & Tarrant. See my other videos for a review of a Comptometer machine. As far as I know, "comptometer" became a genericized trademark for any key-driven machine. This Victor machine wasn't key-driven, so people at that time probably wouldn't have called it a comptometer, and the Victor corporation certainly wouldn't have.

@ChrisStaecker

6 жыл бұрын

Thanks for watching, and happy 100th! (Hey you never responded to my email! Who's a good person to contact with a question I have for an academic research project? I wrote to customer service but got nothing.)

Dude! You contradicted yourself in one statement. Said it was the 200 then said they came out with the 300 but the 300 has subtraction key. What is confusing is it is like you don't know.

@ChrisStaecker

6 жыл бұрын

My machine is the 200. It doesn't have a subtraction key- it's the 200. Later they came out with the 300. Mine's not the 300.

Hmmm. Anti-virus for non-networked mechanical machines. Hmmmmmmm.

What in the name of all that is holy is a "salad pizza"? 🤢

@ChrisStaecker

2 жыл бұрын

Actually quite good. Colony Grill is a classic elite New Haven pizza place, so they can pull it off.