Subject areaArtificial intelligence
Also known asBrunsviga calculator
Brunsviga is the brand of mechanical calculators built by Grimme, Natalis & Co. of Braunschweig, Germany, and takes its name from the Latin form of the city.
They are pinwheel calculators: at the end of the nineteenth century the company licensed the design of Willgodt Theophil Odhner, and its engineer Franz Trinks improved it until it was fit for large-scale production.
In 1921 the company became a joint-stock company, and the Brunsviga name covers a family of models found in German and European offices for much of the twentieth century. Among them:
- the Brunsviga Trinks MR, the compact model from the years of the First World War;
- the Brunsviga 13, produced between the 1920s and the Second World War.
From 1922 to 1927 the neighbouring Rema Patent maker, also from Braunschweig, effectively merged into the firm, and some of its models were sold under the Brunsviga brand. It is one of the best-known European names among mechanical technologies of intelligence.
Source: Wikidata Q994100; Rechnerlexikon e John Wolff's Web Museum (Calculating Machines), citati nella scheda tecnica del modello aggiornata al 09/08/2026.
An example
The case below is constructed, because the term does not yet appear in the articles. A German bank in the 1930s calculates interest on accounts at the end of the quarter: every clerk has a crank calculator on the desk, and the word Brunsviga on the cover is enough to name the type of machine, as would later happen with the name of a computer brand.
Enrico Giubertoni. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0: you may quote, translate and adapt this entry with the author’s name and a link, stating any changes. For commercial use, write to info@enricogiubertoni.com
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