The first machines were called “Registering Accountants,” and “Arithmometers.” Burroughs lived to see the fulfilment of his dreams and the machine a commercial success. He died September 14, 1898, at his country home in Citronelle, Alabama, a victim of tuberculosis. There were at that time 8,000 banks in the country, and it was Burroughs’ idea that as soon as these were supplied the market for adding machines would be exhausted. Today, there are more than 200,000 adding machines of that one make in use. The need for an all-around office assistant that could multiply, divide, subtract as easily as it could add, was an idea nourished in the mind and thought of a young student of the University of Michigan. After graduation, Jay R. Monroe turned his attention to clerical and commercial lines. He became acquainted with all the different types of adding and so-called calculating machines. He saw their limitations and restrictions. He saw the need for versatility--for more simplicity in operation--for getting away from arbitrary rules--for release from the sapping mental tax. [Illustration: THE LATEST MODEL CALCULATING MACHINE _Courtesy of the Monroe Calculating Machine Company._] So in 1911 Monroe met Mr. Baldwin. Mr. Monroe realized the possibilities of Mr. Baldwin’s idea. Together they set about designing the machine to make it as nearly perfect as possible in adaptation to the needs of modern business. They produced a machine in which the best of the European features are said to be combined with the operating ease and simplicity of American-made machines. Provision is made for the correction of errors, and operation is in two directions, forward for addition and multiplication, and backward for subtraction and division. The latest model is a desk machine, occupying less than one square foot of space and weighing about twenty-six pounds. One of the latest developments of the adding machine is a type that will post ledgers and statements. This machine is said to be the final step in relieving bookkeeping of its drudgery. [Illustration: THE “DUODECILLION”--THE LARGEST CAPACITY ADDING MACHINE IN THE WORLD--HAS FORTY ROWS OF KEYS AND WILL ADD TO WITHIN A UNIT OF TEN DUODECILLIONS To appreciate this prodigious figure, imagine that a marvelous high-speed flying machine were invented that would go to the sun and back in a day. If you made this 186,000,000-mile trip every day, it would take you just 14,729,700,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years to travel a duodecillion miles. _Courtesy of the Burroughs Adding Machine Company._] How Big is the Largest Adding Machine in the World? The largest adding machine ever made was produced in 1915 and has a capacity of forty columns, or within one unit of ten duodecillions. This is a number too prodigious for the mind of man to grasp. This machine was exhibited at the Panama Expositions in 1915.