Hello everybody !
So recently youtube decided that I might like a video of a mechanical calculator. I did, and when I saw it, it reminded me of the similar machine of my dad. Until that day I never thought about what it is. Apparently it's an electromechanical calculator from the year 1953!
It has been sitting in my dads office for at least 20 years without running once. I cleaned it up a little, there was some dust and sand inside ...
When I first turned it on it got stuck during the operations because the geares were quite hard to move but after some turns it works fine again. Quite good for a 64 years old machine !
So it's called electromechanical becaue the actual calculation is done mechanical but instead of a crank that you would have to turn the is a motor in the back that turns the gears for you.
I'll get some lubricant so it will run better and will work even longer.
And now some pictures, unfortunateley it's hard to show the mechanism because there is metal everywhere.
This is the motor with a weird black thing on the box which I think contains several capacitors :
This is the back of the motor and there is a piece of metal which I guess bends when there is too much current flowing and then opens the contact so the current stops flowing. So it would stop current to be drawn when the motor gets stuck. I've got no idea what the lower thing is though, there is some green stone/crystal inbetween.
On the next picture you can (hopefully) see a contact in the lower right corner which would be closed when the crank for an operation is pressed. Then the motor starts turning until the operation is finished and the contact opens again stopping the motor.
If you have questions I'll try to answer. If you know more about this machine than I do, please tell me !
opidopi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3YfvmhfMk0