This rare MADAS XIe Meda calculator dates from c1922.
During the early part of the 20th Century mechanical calculators became an integral feature for every office, but such machines were still manual requiring the user to rotate a handle to use. This MADAS machine was one of the very first to incorporate an early electric motor to speed up the operation, helping open the doors to ever more automatic and efficient calculating.
The MADAS
In 1897 a new Swiss firm started by H.W. Egli joined the professional calculator market by launching their highly influential ‘Millionaire’ mechanical calculator. It was a large and impressive instrument which required its own stand and earned the young firm a good reputation, but as Egli was to realise this also held it back for the average small office. In 1914 the firm launched a far smaller successor which they called the MADAS (Multiplication-Automatic-Division-Addition-Subtraction). Offered initially as a standard hand-driven device, in 1916 a forward thinking semi-automatic electric version was also added to the product line. This was called the IXe and became one of the first electric calculators in the world. While the operator still had to set the dials manually the calculation was sped up substantially with the small externally-mounted motor. In 1922 the IXe was refined further and re-released as the XIe which is for sale here. It seems few of these IXe machines were really sold before their next model was released making this a rare and desirable survivor today.
I won’t go into the calculating technicalities of this machine as Gerald Saudan has produced a fantastic website dedicated to the Millionaire and Madas Calculators which I highly recommend (click the link here to his details on the Madas XIe).
Dimensions: 64cm long x 36 cm deep x 16cm high.
