The Kuli calculator was sold by the Adix company and represented a further development in their attempt to build a successful keyboard operated calculating machine. Unlike the other machines in this section the Kuli utilised a moveable carriage so that, as with the Thomas de Colmar arithmometer and pinwheel machines, it was possible (if somewhat laborious) to do multiplication and division on it. The machine, which remains in perfect working condition, is by now very rare with 16 others recorded on the various sales databases as having been sold to collectors since 1992.
Martin notes:
“The Kuli is a later improvement (1909). It is sturdier than its predecessors and has large keys such as may be found on typewriters. It too serves for adding columns, but after addition of a column it is only necessary to depress a special key to start with the next column of digits. The total remains in the machine up to a twelve decimal place result… The Kuli may even be used for multiplication, in fact five-digit numbers may be multiplied by six-digit numbers. Multiplication, too, occurs merely by depression of keys. Size: 23-cm wide, 10-cm deep, and 8-cm high. Weight: without case 1300 grams. Price: originally 60 marks, later 75 marks.”1
As Martin notes in the later model of this machine “Depression of a particular key shifts the module with the counting mechanism into the desired higher decimal place.” However, in the earlier model of which this is an example the carriage is shifted by lifting it using the small handle at the front and shifting it manually to the desired place.
The machine has a “10” key to enable numbers up to 99 to be entered directly from the keyboard. The small crank handle on the left is used to clear the register of the machine setting it back to zeros.
Provenance: ex “Dunottar Collection” of the late David Gamble, 2014.
1 Ernest Martin, The Calculating Machines (a translated reprint of Die Rechenmaschinen, 1925), The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England, and Tomash Publishers Los Angeles and San Francisco, p. 127 (↑)
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