The Millionaire Calculator
The Millionaire calculator was the first commercially successful mechanical calculator that could perform a direct multiplication. It was in production from 1893 to 1935 with a total of about five thousand machines manufactured.
Principle of calculation machine with progressive transmission of tens was invented by Chebyshev and demonstrated on World's fair 1878 in Paris. In 1881 Chebyshev demonstrated the model of calculation machine with automatic multiplication but did not take out a patent for it.
Designed by Otto Steiger, a Swiss engineer, Millionaire was first patented in Germany in 1892. Patents were issued in France, Switzerland, Canada and the USA in 1893. The production started in 1893. Since 1899, until 1935 it was handled by Hans W. Egli of Zürich. During this long life, 4,655 "Millionaire" machines was sold.
All mechanical calculators commercialized prior to the Millionaire, like the arithmometer, the Odhner arithmometer or the comptometer were simple adding machines; they implemented multiplication by continued addition under operator control. In 1889, Léon Bollée, in France, invented a machine that required only one turn of the crank handle to multiply the number entered on the sliders by a multiplier number. This was accomplished by creating a mechanical representation of the multiplication table which could be read and used by the machine. The manufacturing cost of Bollée's machine was too high and the production was discontinued after a few units. The Millionaire was built with the same target of direct mechanical multiplication in mind. 
In first decades of 20th century two other machines with direct multiplication were produced: the Moon-Hopkins and Kuhrt-US. These two companies was then taken over by Burroughs and Brunsviga. These machines filled quite a different niche from the Millionaire. They were book-keeping machines with printing features, and were too unwieldy to perform divisions and complex computations. The Millionaire, however, was better suited for technical computations.
This machine was very big and heavy and occupied an entire desk. Its size made it awkward to operate.
It was commercialized as "The Millionaire" in English speaking countries, "La Millionnaire" in French and "Millionär" in German speaking countries.
- De Brabandere, L: Calculus, page 166, Mardaga, 1995
- IBM historical archives
- Barbour machine on History of Computer website
- Verea machine on History of Computer website
- Bollée machine on History of Computer website
- These data comes from IBM Computer Museum, but a Millionaire with SN 6455 exists
- Martin, E: The Calculating Machines, page 119, Charles Babbage Institute, 1992
- Burroughs-Moon-Hopkins on Rechnerlexikon
- Kuhrt-US on Rechenmaschinen lllustrated
- John Wolff's Web Museum An in-depth technical description of The Millionaire calculator.
- History of Computer website A historical and technical article about The Millionaire calculator.
- Arithmetical Machines & Instruments / 19th Century
- Jim Falk's things-that-count.com showing the rare 10 slider Millionaire calculator