Kyle Rankin @kyle@librem.one

It wasn't until the 1950s that trends changed and popular office machines started having green and grey hues, like this early 1950s NCR 11-EN. One big exception was the Comptometer, which kept its brown tones until the 50s when it too shifted to the green/grey aesthetic.

The Burroughs Class 3 I showed earlier in the thread is an example of rebranding a machine originally made by the Pike company. But when 90% of a market looks a certain way, competitors (like this Monroe Model G from 1918) mimic the design. So even in 1946 RC Allen followed suit.

At one point Burroughs controlled about 90% of the adding machine market. It accomplished this like companies today: it bought up its competitors and rebranded their products. That meant painting them black, and instead of felt, they just painted the spot under the keys green.

The Burroughs Class 1 was the first adding machine Burroughs sold starting at the end of the 19th century. It was the Cadillac of adding machines and featured a shiny black case, beveled glass on the sides to show off the mechanism, and actual green felt under the keyboard.

This machine looks and functions largely the same as Burroughs adding machines 30-40 years older. Have you noticed how many machines I've featured (like this Burroughs Class 3) have a black case, and a keyboard with white and black keys on a green background? My theory for why:

This is an RC Allen Model 75 adding/listing machine from around 1946. RC Allen was founded in 1932 in Grand Rapids Michigan and was a distributor of Facit calculators from Sweden. The brand still exists today as a manufacturer of precision aircraft instruments.

I wrote about this a few months back, and likened Apple's approach to a nursing home. Some people need the extra care a nursing home provides, so it's great they are an option, but most adults don't choose to live in one. https://puri.sm/posts/the-future-of-computers-the-neighborhood-and-the-nursing-home/

If an iPhone is your home, installing an app is inviting someone in. Apple demands they approve all your visitors, doesn't trust you to do it yourself. They say it's to stop criminals but it's really to stop competitors, charge tolls from the rest. https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/3/22761724/apple-craig-federighi-ios-sideloading-web-summit-2021-european-commission-digital-markets-act

When I read Snow Crash for the first time, the most dystopian thing to me weren't the burbclaves, but that all the useful information on the future Internet was behind a paywall. It's odd that this is the part of the metaverse people want to build.

The things you rent, end up owning you.

So Big Tech companies can't manage to make a simple protocol like messaging interoperable (FB owns 3, Google 6), but we are supposed to believe something complicated like the Metaverse will be different?

Pick a random consumer device lying around your house and imagine someone coming across it after 70 years of neglect. Part of the device no longer works. Would they be able to fix it? https://puri.sm/posts/beyond-right-to-repair/

Ok I think we are ready for tomorrow.

I fixed the timing but this is as clean as I dare to make it right now. It got wet in storage some time in the past and rust worked its way under the black paint and through part of a screw. The rest of the paint is very flaky. I removed as much surface rust as much as I dared.

Round 2. This time with a Gem portable adding machine from 1941 (I have the original box, receipt, and warranty card) that's rusty *and* has two digits out of time with the rest of the register.

Done! One reason I cleaned it is I smelled that "old appliance" smell and wanted to ensure the motor wasn't strained. I ran it with the cover off and saw flashes in the back. The mechanism disconnects the motor when it's not needed, and that makes it arc. I was smelling ozone!

Time to clean and oil (and this time not have to repair) a National Cash Register 11-EN electro-mechanical adding machine from the early 1950s.