Old calculator Marchant ES8

An electric calculator in 1928.

The Marchant ES8, from around 1928, is an electro-mechanical calculator. It means that the mechanics inside is made of gears and levers, but the movement is assisted by an electric motor. There isn’t the main crank to add numbers in calculations like in the mechanical typewriters.

There are still little cranks to reset the counters to use manually, this is not done electrically. We could say it’s an hybrid calculator.

It seems strange that there is an electric calculator in 1928, but here it is. It's very noisy of course, but it woks.

If you want se see how it does calculations, you can see this video.