William S. Burroughs (1857–1898) a man driven by the trauma of the ledger. A former bank clerk whose health had failed under the repetitive strain of manual addition, he obsessed over a machine that could “audit” as it calculated.
In 1888, he patented the Burroughs Adding Machine, the first truly successful printing calculator. Unlike the Felt Comptometer, the Burroughs provided a physical paper tape — a “proof” that allowed managers to sleep at night. He didn’t just sell a machine; he sold the certainty of a permanent record.