Go back a hundred... no, no, no! A hundred twenty years. A hundred twenty years ago, you want to do adding and subtracting, well... you'll do long adding and substracting. If you were really clever, and you were really rich, you would have a French Arithomether. But, if you really wanted to do a lot of arithmethic, You were kinda stuck. Hans Egli, 1894, 1895, Switzerland, came up with an absolutely wonderful device: a calculator... called the millionaire. I'll not only add; it'll multiply, it'll divide... It'll even subtract! So it's a four-function calculator! It has handles on either side. I can lift this up... [Laughing] Just... ...And it only weighs 60 or 70 pounds! A portable calculator smaller than a piano! You can't get cooler than that. Let's try to just... add 3. Crank this around once... Errrrup! Three once. This three... again. 3 plus 3 is 6. Again... 9! And then 12! 15... 18... 21... Okay, so every time I want to add a number, I crank this around once! I crank it around once. Every time I want to add. Let's try something slightly more complex. Let's set this to fourteen-million, six-hundred... five... three... one. So this is fourteen-million, six-hundred thirty-seven thousand, five-hundred thirty-one. Okay. I'll add this once. Okay, the answer is fourteen-million, six-hundred thirty-seven thousand, five-hundred thirty-one Again! This number plus itself: Twenty-nine million, two-hundred seventy-five thousand, sixty-two. Again... So, each time I add this, I've now multiplied this by three. Fourteen-million, six-hundred thirty-seven thousand, five-hundred thirty-one times three is: 43,912,593 Not bad! It adds, and by successive addition, I can just crank around, add one more time, add again, and go... oh yeah! Yeah, big deal. The cool thing, the absolute wonderful thing about the Millionaire Machine is it has one-crank-multiplication. I can multiply a big number by a single digit in one turn. Let's do a reset. I'll set to multiply. So I'll multiply this big number - instead of by one - by seven. Seven times this number will wind up down here. Crank it around one time - one single crank! This big number, 14,637,531 times 7 is 102,462,717. But watch this: Instead of multiplying by 7, let's multiply by 74. One turn! One turn! Now, let's multiply this big number times 749! We should pick up a 9 over here. One turn! Errrrup! 14 million blah-blah-blah times 749 is 10,963,510,719. So, we're already into the billions. Let's multiply once more by 6. Single turn. 14,637,531 times 7,496 is 109,722,932,376. All that multiplying required just four turns of this! Because this Millionaire has - built into it - a read-only memory that knows the multiply tables! It knows that 7 times 2 is 14 This thing knows that 1 times 7 is 7 It knows that … 8 times 4 is … err … 32? Brady, can I take you upstairs? Brady says it's ok for me to show you the read-only memory. Come over here. Come here, come here, come here. Ok guys, I actually have two of these. This one I'm reparing. Boy, there's a lot to fix inside. This is the multiply-unit. All milled by hand out of brass. Along here is the
read- only memory is the multiply table put in brass it'll multiply any one digit. Essentially, it knows that zero times anything is zero, it knows that one times
anything is itself, all the way up to nine. It knows its tables from 0 to 9. It knows the 9s table,
here's the 0 table 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 all the way up to 9. So, maybe I can show this. By bringing this
over here and turning this you'll see these levers engage with the table. Right now if I want to multiply by zero
you'll notice nothing engages with this. Multiplying by 1. Multiplying by 2. Let's multiply by 9, crank this all the way over here, and the bottom row of fingers will push along here and register nine times each of these digits to bring them down into the results table. Absolutely amazing! I'm blown away! In Switzerland, a hundred-twenty years ago, people had the smarts to figure out how to build the predecessor to today's computers. I got
two of them about 35 years ago, 38 years ago in Buffalo New York, a bank was closing up, I was at the auction I paid a good penny for this, it was
considered to be worth its weight in brass. Yep, I paid $75 for it, which was about
how much the brass was worth. I made it even more portable by mounting it on wheels, so that I can close it up and take it wherever I wish. Next time I
need to multiply, add, subtract, or divide I know just how to go to. Now the cost of this is the chiropractic
bills of carrying it. Whatever it's worth on eBay would be subtracted by the shipping
costs of something that weighs 50/75/100 pounds.
He also has 1,000 Klein bottles under his house.
These calculators sell for $2000.00 so that was a great buy for $75.00
Ah this is the guy who gave one of the most memorable TED talks 8 years ago.
Also a really great watch: a series of videos on a harmonic analyzer, mechanically performing Fourier analysis.
Cliff Stoll is the coolest.
He's a little to fucking rough for a 100 year old marvel.
When /u/clickspring finishes his clock, I'd like to see him take on one of these...
The Libyans are coming
The second I see this guy in any numberphile video it puts a smile on my face.