Verea, Ramon - 1881

Multiplication By Machinery.

Mr. Ramon Verea, a Spanish resident of New York, has been devoting his leisure hours for several years in developing a machine that will multiply and divide, and has finally succeeded.  It will produce a product having fifteen figures, and the factors may be of nine or less than six figures.  A turn of a small crank once for each figure in the multiplier displays the product on a disk  the work is almost instantaneous and the accuracy of it unimpeachable.

The machine consists of ten circular plates placed vertically, and on the edge of each are figures from 1 to 9 inclusive and zero.  On the sides of these plates are points which form in substance a multiplication table.  Suppose 9 is to be multiplied by 6.  The first plate is turned so that nine shows on top; the other factor is then shown on a wheel belonging to a similar set as those on which nine is shown.  When the crank is turned the multiplicand table turns six-ninths of a revolution and a point on the fourth concentric circle of points on the side of the plate is presented on one side and a point on the fifth concentric circle on the other.  These two points meet each a small tongue which operates upon the product box, where the result is directly shown.  The mechanism by which the product is recorded is too complicated to admit of a description except at great length.

There are a series of wheels worked upon, each of them graduated as to size and shape with the concentric circles on the plates.  It might be said that in the multiplications the additions necessary are made simultaneously with the multiplication.  For example, multiplying 56 by 7 the process is 7 times 6 are 42, 7 times 5 are 35 and 4 are 29 <sic> - product, 392.  With the machine the work is instantaneous.

When the wheel is turned the record is first made of 42 and then of 35.  The figure in the last plate of 35, that is the 5, is at once added to the figure in the place of the tens of the other number, and the cranks completes the revolution.  If the multiplier were a double number, say 56 by 27 another turn of the crank would make the multiplication and addition complete.  To prove the operation pressing a button throws into gear a new set of wheels, and a turn of the crank reduces all the numbers in the product to zero.  Should zero not at once appear it would prove that the original operation was wrong.

Mr. Verea explains that he did not make the machine either to sell its patent or to put it into use, but simply to show that it was possible and that a Spaniard can invent as well as an American.  A number of tests that were made in the presence of a Herald reporter and other visitors were conducted with facility and accuracy.  The operation of multiplying 900,000 by 9,000 was correctly performed by the machine while the reporter and an accountant were trying to write out the product which they had already arrived at by a mental process.
~ The Lititz Record, 04-Nov-1881, Page 1, Column 5