KEUFEEL & ESSER CO, CIRCA 1900

Details

A BURKHARDT ARITHMOMETER
KEUFEEL & ESSER CO, CIRCA 1900
signed on the brass plate GERMANY BURKHARDT ARITHMOMETER Keuffel & Esser & Co. New York Sole Agents. eight entry setting sliders, nine counters and sixteen windows to register results, two settings for addition & multiplication and subtraction and division, two typed instructions sheets in English in cupboard with chalk, printed instructions in German to inside lid, with two stamps applied advertising a gold medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle

23 x 7½ x 4in. (59 x 19 x 11cm.)

Provenance

Marked to lid HYDROGRAPHY U.S.G.S. and to brass engraved H U.S.G.S. 1601

Literature

Special notice

These lots have been imported from outside the EU for sale using a Temporary Import regime. Import VAT is payable (at 5%) on the Hammer price. VAT is also payable (at 20%) on the buyer’s Premium on a VAT inclusive basis. When a buyer of such a lot has registered an EU address but wishes to export the lot or complete the import into another EU country, he must advise Christie's immediately after the auction.

Lot Essay

Based on the design of Thomas de Colmar, Arthur Burkhardt issued his clones of the Arithmometer in the 1870s when "the machine deemed sufficiently successful to be worth copying" (Johnston, 1997). The quality of the working mechanism is still evident, and when first issued the machines would have been well treasured and certainly worth the price of $241.50 as advertised by Keuffel & Esser, in their Catalogue of 1899.

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