Payen Aritmometer P3A

The Payen P3A is a mechanical calculator, and looking at the serial number, 3104, should be built around 1897.

The name is after Luis Payen, a great engineer who started to build these calculators based on the original Aritmometer, that was invented by Thomas de Colmar in 1820.

It was the first calculators to be produced in series and sold all around the world, and it was the leader calculator in the second half of 19th century.

Louis Payen started to build his Payen Aritmometer in 1888, and he started to improve the Aritmometer introducing a betterment of the totalizer and counter reset system, a better readability, a reinforcement of the restraint mechanism, possibility of inclination of the case.

This Payen model, the P3A, was built starting from 1896, and were built only around 150 devices of this model.

But at the beginning of 19th century, there were already a lot of competitor of the Aritmometer, both clones and new technologies. Despite many betterments made, the Aritmometer was still complicated to build and costly.

And after the First World War and the scarcity of copper and raw materials, started the decline of the Aritmometer.

If you want to see how it works, here there is a video.

It perform the basic operations, but you can do also square roots