Adding machine in the context of Odometer

The Burroughs Corporation was a major American manufacturer of business equipment. The company was founded in 1886 as the American Arithmometer Company by William Seward Burroughs. The company's history paralleled many of the major developments in computing. At its start, it produced mechanical adding machines, and later moved into programmable ledgers and then computers. It was one of the largest producers of mainframe computers in the world, also producing related equipment including typewriters and printers.

In the 1960s, the company introduced a range of mainframe computers that were well regarded for their performance running high-level languages. These formed the core of the company's business into the 1970s. At that time the emergence of superminicomputers and the dominance of the IBM System/360 and 370 at the high end led to shrinking markets, and in 1986 the company purchased former competitor Sperry UNIVAC and merged their operations to form Unisys.

A mechanical computer is a computer built from mechanical components such as levers and gears rather than electronic components. The most common examples are adding machines and mechanical counters, which use the turning of gears to increment output displays. More complex examples could carry out multiplication and division—Friden used a moving head which paused at each column—and even differential analysis. One model, the Ascota 170 accounting machine sold in the 1960s, calculated square roots.

Mechanical computers can be either analog, using continuous or smooth mechanisms such as curved plates or slide rules for computations; or discrete, which use mechanisms like pinwheels and gears.

Thermal paper (often supplied in roll form, and sometimes referred to as an audit roll) is a special fine paper that is coated with a material formulated to change color locally when exposed to heat. It is used in thermal printers, particularly in inexpensive devices, such as adding machines, cash registers, credit card terminals and small, lightweight portable printers.

The surface of the paper is coated with a substance which changes color when heated above a certain temperature. The printer essentially consists of a transport mechanism which drags the paper across a thermal dot matrix print head. The (very small) dots of the head heat up very quickly to imprint a dot, then cool equally quickly.

The American Arithmometer Company was an American manufacturer organized in St. Louis, Missouri in 1886 by William S. Burroughs that produced adding machines.

William Seward Burroughs I (January 28, 1857 – September 14, 1898) was an American inventor born in Rochester, New York.