Wilgott Theophil Odhner
Encyclopedia
Willgodt Theophil Odhner (in Cyrillic
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...

, Вильгодт Теофил Однер) was a Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 engineer and entrepreneur, working in St. Petersburg, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

. He was the inventor of the Odhner Arithmometer
Odhner Arithmometer
The Odhner Arithmometer was a very successful pinwheel calculator invented in Russia in 1873 by W. T. Odhner, a Swedish immigrant. Its industrial production officially started in 1890 in Odhner's Saint Petersburg workshop...

, which by the 1940s was one of the most popular type of portable mechanical calculator in the world.

According to a brochure distributed by Odhner's company at the Paris World exposition of 1900 "...Odhner had, in 1871, an opportunity to repair a Thomas calculating machine
Arithmometer
An Arithmometer or Arithmomètre was a mechanical calculator that could add and subtract directly and could perform long multiplications and divisions effectively by using a movable accumulator for the result. Patented in France by Thomas de Colmar in 1820 and manufactured from 1851 to 1915, it...

 and then became convinced that it is possible to solve the problem of mechanical calculation by a simpler and more appropriate way". It took him 19 years to perfect the design of this new machine so it could be manufactured effectively.

Early years

Odhner studied at the Royal Institute of Technology
Royal Institute of Technology
The Royal Institute of Technology is a university in Stockholm, Sweden. KTH was founded in 1827 as Sweden's first polytechnic and is one of Scandinavia's largest institutions of higher education in technology. KTH accounts for one-third of Sweden’s technical research and engineering education...

 in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

 from 1864 to 1867 but left before graduating. At age 23, in 1868, he moved to Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, even though he didn't speak any Russian. As soon as he arrived, he went to the Swedish consulate, which found him a job in a local mechanical workshop. A few months later he joined the Nobel's mechanical factory owned by a Swede named Ludvig Nobel (1831–1888), brother of Alfred Nobel
Alfred Nobel
Alfred Bernhard Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, innovator, and armaments manufacturer. He is the inventor of dynamite. Nobel also owned Bofors, which he had redirected from its previous role as primarily an iron and steel producer to a major manufacturer of cannon and other armaments...

 of Nobel Prize fame, where he worked until 1877. In 1878 he joined the Expedition, a large paper mill and printing house, and worked there until 1892.

Manufacturing of the Arithmometer

While working at the Expedition, Odhner started his own workshop in 1885, building high quality production machines for local manufacturing businesses. One of his biggest project was the manufacturing of printing presses, he also made cigarette-making machines and all kind of scientific instruments. Odhner officially started the production of his arithmometer in this workshop in 1890. Early on, Mr. F. N. Hill, a British citizen, became his associate but he left the company around 1897, making Odhner the sole proprietor until his death in 1905.

After Odhner's death, his sons Alexander and Georg and son-in-law Karl Siewert continued the production and about 23,000 calculators were made before the factory was forced to close down in 1918.

Independent clone makers from all over the world, including Russia, carried the design from 1893 well into the 1970s.

Family

In 1871 he married Alma Skånberg the daughter of Fredrik Skånberg, a Nobel coworker. They had seven children. Unfortunately Emilia, their second child, died at age 2 in 1877, the same year Alma, their third child was born.

W. T. Odhner died of a heart attack on 15 September 1905 (Gregorian calendar
Gregorian calendar
The Gregorian calendar, also known as the Western calendar, or Christian calendar, is the internationally accepted civil calendar. It was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII, after whom the calendar was named, by a decree signed on 24 February 1582, a papal bull known by its opening words Inter...

) in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

External links

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