adding machine

American  

noun

1. a machine capable of adding numbers and sometimes capable of performing the other arithmetic functions of subtraction, multiplication, and division: such machines are now obsolescent, having been replaced in most applications by electronic calculators.

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adding machine British  

noun

1. a mechanical device, operated manually or electrically, for adding and often subtracting, multiplying, and dividing

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Etymology

Origin of adding machine

An Americanism dating back to 1870–75

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

adding machine

The first adding machine was invented in 1623.

From Salon ● Jan. 16, 2023

Bowman is a language dervish—the pleasure in hearing him describe the adding machine, the source of William S. Burroughs’s family as “the rosary of capitalism,” belongs not to me but to literature.

From The New Yorker ● Jan. 2, 2019

In offices, worker productivity benefited from the typewriter, invented in 1867, the cash register, invented in 1879, and the adding machine, invented in 1885.

From Textbooks ● Dec. 30, 2014

Alito recalled his father sitting at the dining table with an adding machine, readjusting the size of the legislative districts after the Supreme Court adopted the "one-person, one-vote" rule in the 1960s.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 8, 2014

Martha stood up on a platform at the adding machine show, and answered the problems quicker than the calculators could operate.

From "Cheaper by the Dozen" by Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey