Bookvica

[COMPUTING HISTORY] Schetnye mashiny [i.e. Calculating Machines]

Lenz, K.

Item #2481

Moscow; Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1928. 160 pp.: ill. 20,5×13,5 cm. In original illustrated wrappers. Spine and covers slightly restored, otherwise mint. According to a stamp on t.p., the copy was used at the Kherson trade port in 1930s.

First and only Russian edition. One of 3000 copies.
Russian translation of the second German edition of ‘Die rechenmaschinen und das maschinenrechnen’ [Calculating Machines and Machine Calculation] was undertaken by E.R. Gagentorn who also enlarged the original text. His adaptation was edited by Naum Ilyich Idelson (1885–1951), a Soviet theoretical astronomer, mathematics and expert in the history of physics. Likely, the book was translated and edited during the period when Idelson headed the Petrograd (Leningrad) branch of the Pulkovo Computing Department.

German engineer Karl Lenz introduced mechanisms and operation of different calculating machines. According to the editorial, “he describes a significant number of models <...> but he covers their major components only. In most cases he doesn’t get to the technical details, believing that they are needed by a specialist designer, and not by the reader who is looking for orientation in the huge variety of modern machines <...>, so he left relatively important points in the shadows. That is why the translator and editor considered it necessary to make a small addition to the book, examining in more detail the mechanism for transmitting tens in two common in our country models, namely Odhner- and Thomas-machines”. The edition contains drawings and photographs of external view, schemes of internal construction of various machines.

Worldcat doesn’t track this edition.

Price: $950.00