Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Its different forms depend either on the totalizing principle, on the principle of a train of gears whose ratio is 10 to 1, or on both. In a convenient form the figures are arranged like the keys of a type-writer in vertical rows from 1 to 9. By depressing the key for the proper figure in the row of units, tens, hundreds, etc., the result of the addition appears in figures. Such machines are much used in banks, offices, and factories.
- noun An instrument or a machine intended to facilitate or perform the addition of numbers. See calculating-machine, arithmometer.
Etymologies
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Examples
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"Oh," yawns Tillie, whose husband is a little older and doubtless, in some ways, a good deal sharper than Herb, "those adding-machine people are easy to handle, because they're so awfully good at seeing what's in front of them."
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Anonymous said ... think of the paper costs to a publisher! or will they now print on adding-machine tape?
Maybe they were on to something, Roger Sutton 2007
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To me, a similar argument in the 1950s would have held that we can't introduce computers because it will reduce the growth in the adding-machine business.
Charles Alexander: Heads Still in the Sand on Global Warming 2009
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The financial experts stood with their faxes and adding-machine rolls and began to list on a large sheet of paper the different countries where they had, so far, tracked the transfers of bulk sums of money.
Deadly Intent Lynda La Plante 2008
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The financial experts stood with their faxes and adding-machine rolls and began to list on a large sheet of paper the different countries where they had, so far, tracked the transfers of bulk sums of money.
Deadly Intent Lynda La Plante 2008
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The financial experts stood with their faxes and adding-machine rolls and began to list on a large sheet of paper the different countries where they had, so far, tracked the transfers of bulk sums of money.
Deadly Intent Lynda La Plante 2008
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A new idea had come into being: “economic man”—a pale wraith of a creature who followed his adding-machine brain wherever it led him.
The Worldly Philosophers Robert L. Heilbroner 1999
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A new idea had come into being: “economic man”—a pale wraith of a creature who followed his adding-machine brain wherever it led him.
The Worldly Philosophers Robert L. Heilbroner 1999
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Actually, very many long distance operators today punch out the number on a set of keys like those of an adding-machine.
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Repeatedly she must add and re-add a column of figures; even the evidence of the adding-machine had to be proven.
Our Nervous Friends — Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness Robert S. Carroll
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