Original-Odhner St. Petersbourg

The Original-Odhner St. Petersbourg is the pinwheel calculator built in Saint Petersburg by the Maschinenfabrik W.

T. Odhner, the factory of Willgodt Theophil Odhner, while the city still bore that name. The factory had been making pinwheel arithmometers there since 1874, and the trade name "Original-Odhner" has been in use since about 1907.

Three clues identify and date the model:

• the place name "St. Petersbourg": on 31 August 1914 the city became Petrograd, so the marking points to a machine branded earlier;
• the wording "Original-Odhner", which places the machine after about 1907;
• the German badge, MASCHINENFABRIK W.T.ODHNER, consistent with the family's Baltic German origins; machines lettered in Latin script were made for export, while the Russian market received them marked in Cyrillic.

None of the three clues is enough on its own, but together they close a narrow window. The model belongs to the Tsarist Russian line, to be kept separate from the two that followed: the Swedish one, in Gothenburg from 1917-1918 and later in Åtvidaberg, and the Soviet one, with the Felix made in Moscow. The principle of the mechanism stays the same, while construction and materials change.

Source: John Wolff, pagine sulla storia della Original-Odhner, per l'uso del nome commerciale dal 1907 circa e per le filiere svedese e sovietica; la rinomina di San Pietroburgo in Pietrogrado è del 31 agosto 1914.

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

Spotted an inaccuracy or something that needs updating? Write to info@enricogiubertoni.com and help make this glossary a better place.