Subject areaArtificial intelligence
The Brunsviga 13 is a pinwheel calculator model by Brunsviga, built by Grimme, Natalis & Co. of Braunschweig.
According to the Rechnerlexikon production ran from 1927 to 1943, and the pre-war models always came in black; green arrived with the post-war versions.
It is a desk machine with three elements that explain its use in the office:
- the setting levers, one per digit, which push out the pins of the discs;
- the sliding carriage, which holds the result register and the revolution counter and shifts one position to multiply by ten;
- the side crank, turned forwards to add and backwards to subtract.
The mechanism is the one devised by Willgodt Theophil Odhner and developed in Germany by Franz Trinks, and it belongs to the technologies of intelligence that brought mechanical calculation into offices before the computer.
Source: 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. The accountant of a chemical company in the 1930s divides the cost of a batch by the kilos produced: he sets the cost with the levers, shifts the carriage and turns the crank backwards until the bell rings, then reads the quotient in the revolution counter.
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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