The Calculating Machines of Sir Samuel Morland

I've always found it interesting that hobby machinists make much more complicated steam engines and locomotive models, but not calculating machines.

I wrote a perl script a long time ago to output the gcode to scribe/scratch out slide rule scales on my milling machine. Not very hard, once you can scratch out a regular ruler, you log / double log / triple log scale it. Never went anywhere with it but it was fun.

Took apart an ancient mechanical cash register when I was a kid to figure out how it worked, typical proto-engineer kid. Surprisingly simple, its all in the clutch design and some obvious gearing.

These machines always look to me, like more work than doing it on paper.