William S. Burroughs: The Inventor Who Fueled a Computation Revolution
From a young age, William Seward Burroughs was consumed by his creations. In his backyard workshop, he spent childhood afternoons disassembling gadgets, marveling at gears and machinery. William preferred his own company – tinkering alone with single-minded intensity while other young boys played sports. This mechanical obsession would one day change the face of modern computation.
The Burroughs Family: A Spawning Ground for Inventors
William came from inventive stock. His father Edmund ran a successful repair shop, providing the tools, parts and space for his son to hone early engineering chops. William‘s elder brother Charles would also eventual attain his own agricultural equipment patents.
But it was clear from the start that William‘s skill surpassed them all. His intuitive understanding of mechanical principles enabled him to build complex windmills and other contraptions from scratch with no training. “He could comprehend intricate mechanical challenges quicker than any adult,” Charles recalled. “We all knew any field William entered would be revolutionized by his genius.”
Even so, William remained an outlier in the family. Quiet and reserved, he ignored traditional boyhood amusements like sport and play. Instead, finding joy in solving puzzles no one else could untangle – coaxing machinery into being with sheer tenacity. On occasion however, young William’s stubborn intensity overwhelmed him, culminating in explosive fits of frustration. His father lamented William’s isolated intensity, nicknaming his talented son “cold as a clam and remote as the stars.”
The Lecture That Seeded an Unwavering Ambition
At fifteen, William attended a lecture that would provide the spark setting his life‘s purpose ablaze. Up until hearing about the "Mathematical Shortcuts", William had little interest whatsoever in arithmetic. He anticipated learning rudimentary business math used in banking and bookkeeping. Instead, he witnessed firsthand machines calculating complex equations far quicker than any human.
William left the lecture embarrassed by his limited perspective, but the images of those wondrous adding devices stuck. He fixated on a bold vision – to build the world‘s most advanced calculator. From then on, math and computation intertwined with mechanics as William‘s driving obsession.
Early Careers Laying the Foundation
To pursue this dream required money and practical knowledge. William tempered his ambitions as a discount clerk at the Cayuga County National Bank. This position trained his number fluency while earning modest wages. However already frail health failed William, as he contracted a near-fatal tuberculosis infection aged just eighteen.
Forced to quit banking, William relied on his father‘s assistance to launch a small manufacturing workshop. The business flopped but introduced William to luminaries like Richard Mitchell Scruggs. Exposure to Scrugg‘s innovative adding printer and other inventor prototypes finally gave William the edge needed to make his vision a reality.
By 1885, William secured the first of several patents for mechanical calculating devices. His perseverance was rewarded last when the "Burroughs Adding Machine" transformed sluggish human computation overnight.
The Burroughs Adding Machine – A Genesis Story
1880s workplaces depended on error-prone and sluggish human calculation. Abacuses required high math proficiency while other calculator prototypes like the stepped drum, pinwheel or keyboard machines proved unreliable. Businesses worldwide desperately needed a solution.
William‘s early adding machine designs during his St Louis workshop days failed too. But coinciding with his first patent award, everything changed. Partnering with investor Joseph Boyer gave William the financing to open the Burroughs Adding Machine Company and launch large scale manufacturing.
By 1890, Burroughs’ ingenious adder hit markets – the fastest and most precise mechanical calculator ever seen. Operators with minimal training could accurately process 150 calculations per minute. The device was an instant game changer – supercharging accounting, payroll, ledger-keeping and more for banks and corporations.
Burroughs dominated the industry for decades and fuelled workflow computational breakthroughs still benefiting global commerce today. By revolutionizing numeric adding efficiency, William’s obsession became the grandfather of modern data processors. His descendants continued leading the business years after William‘s death – mass producing variations of the lucrative adding machine over a seventy year dynasty.
Man and Machine – The Burroughs Legacy
Later critics condemned William for fixating on his inventions at the expense of family ties. As his grandson wrote, William “would sit for hours in front of his machine in a trance-like ecstasy…oblivious to everything but the task at hand”. His long-suffering wife Ida stated “that machines came first in his affections".
This obsessiveness undoubtedly frayed William‘s few close relationships. His temper could be volatile – culminating in an incident where he furiously heaved equipment out his workshop window during a drunken tantrum. By later years, alcohol abuse and poor health plagued William, hastening tuberculosis-related decline. His company assumed control of all remaining patents prior to William‘s early death aged just 41.
Still for all his personal friction, William‘s adding machine stands untouched as one the most momentous consumer inventions in history. Without it, the meteoric pace of twentieth century data innovation stalls. No computers. No spreadsheets or smartphones. The enablement of rapid, bulk calculations hence bears the indelible stamp of a driven Rochester man who envisioned its necessity long before anyone else. Someone willing to sacrifice nearly everything in single-minded pursuit to benefit generations.
Now when his notorious writer grandson William S. Burroughs commands global acclaim, the inventor patriarch remains obscured. But make no mistake – our digitally powered epoch owes as much to the elder Burroughs‘ mechanical adder as any subsequent computing creation. His relentless obsession brought an end to sluggish hand computation – accelerating global productivity immeasurably and permanently.
