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Brunsviga 10
6-digit setting register, 10-digit accumulator register, 5-digit revolutions register.
This model was made in Germany from 1932 to 1945.
230 x 190 x 95 mm (9.0" x 7.5" x 3.75"), when the rear support is folded up, about 3 Kg (7 lbs).
At first sight this appears to be a pinwheel calculator of the Odhner type, and I was fooled till told otherwise and explored inside. The machine in fact utilises a modified form of stepped gear mechanism arranged to give a very
compact layout - see photographs below. The giveaway that it is not a pinwheel mechanism is that the setting lever assembly does not revolve when the crank handle is turned, see the Odhner calculator.
Manufactured by the firm of Grimme, Natalis and Company A. G. of Braunschweig, Germany, which acquired the patents of the Original Odhner in 1892. It manufactured and improved the pinwheel calculator and sold it under the name Brunsviga.
The usual arrangement of machines of the pinwheel type, as in the Odhner, is to have the setting register at the top of the machine, with the accumulator and the revolution counter side by side below.
In this machine, with
the stepped gear mechanism, the width is greatly reduced by placing the three registers above each other, with the setting register at the bottom, the accumulator above it (and able to be indexed sideways), and the revolution
counter above that.
Brunsviga produced updated models with this arrangement up to the 1970s.
On this model a support plate at the rear folds down to tilt the machine forwards and present the controls to the operator at a better angle. With this support plate folded up to give a height of only 95mm (3.75") the machine is
small enough to fit in a decent sized brief case, though is still fairly heavy at about 3Kg (7 lbs). In modern parlance it would be described as "luggable".
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