The SuN Adder is a chain adder which was made in Germany from about 1910 until the early 1920s. This SuN Adder has serial number 10451. It comes in a nice case, and with a stylus made of Bakelite with a metal tip.
It has a register consisting of 9 parallel number wheels on a single axle. This is the most common size, but there is also a 13-digit version as well as special versions for British currency. Each wheel in the register is driven by teeth attached to a chain belt that passes underneath the wheel. On the front of the machine is an open panel which gives access to the nine chains. The visible chain links are numbered, having the digits 1 to 9 engraved on them. You can use a stylus to pull a numbered link all the way down to the bottom of the panel. This adds the chosen digit to that digit in the register, and the register will automatically carry when a digit exceeds 9.
The chains that you pull down remain in position so that you can read off the number you entered on the bottom row of the visible chain links. To add the next number you first have to clear the input by pressing A on the small lever at the front right of the machine. This releases the chains, allowing them to spring back up without affecting the number in the register.
There is a lever in the right side of the machine next to the register. By pulling this lever forward the register can be reset.
The chains and register wheel only move in one direction, so subtraction can only be done through the addition of complementary numbers. On the side of the chain panel the complementary digits are displayed. For the right hand column use the complementary digit shown on the right of the panel, and for all the other columns use the complementary digit shown on the left.
The small lever marked M is for multiplication. If this is pressed down it will lock in place so that input is cleared immediately without needing to press A every time.
I have acquired a second SuN Adder, which has serial number 6551. I has no stylus or box, and the long pointer between the input sliders and the register is missing leaving an ugly hole. This machine still has the company name engraved in the metal, whereas my other one which was made later uses a decal.
This adder was made by Seidel and Naumann. In 1868 in Dresden, Karl Robert Bruno Naumann zu Königsbrück founded a company based around his small mechanics workshop. There he made sewing machines similar to Singer. A year later the businessman Erich Seidel heavily invested in the company, at which point it was renamed Seidel und Naumann. That name remained even after Seidel left in 1876.
As the company grew rapidly, it diversified to other products:
In 1905 they even produced a rally car, though that does not seem to have led to commercial car production.
The X×X calculator was based on the classic Thomas de Colmar machine, the Arithmometer, but included a variant with buttons instead of sliders for inputting numbers. The X×X and the SuN were both designed by Bernhard Carl Max Behr, who led the calculator division of the company. Bernhard Behr had a history in both manufacturing and marketing calculators, as he manufactured the Arithstyle for Henry Goldman in Berlin, made and sold his own chain adders the Greif and the Argos, and sold machines from various other manufacturers. He died in 1917.
The company was able to rebuild after sustaining major damage in the bombing of Dresden in 1945, but then seems to have specialised in typewriters only. In 1951 it merged with Clemens Miller AG to become VEB Schreibmaschinenwerk(e) Dresden. The "Erika" line of typewriters was made until 1991 after which the company was liquidated.
Gebrauchsanweisung für die Additionsmaschine SuN (PDF, 5.00 MB or archive.org)
Aktiengesellschaft vorm. Seidel & Naumann, Dresden
1920
16 page booklet
74mm × 205mm
This is the German instruction booklet for the SuN adding machine. It has no copyright year, but the code on the front cover suggests it was printed in 1920.
Gebruiks-Aanwijzing voor de SuN-Rekenmachine (PDF, 2.71 MB or archive.org)
Seidel und Naumann
1919
18 page booklet
74mm × 205mm
This is the Dutch instruction booklet for the SuN adding machine. It has no copyright year, but the code on the front cover suggests it was printed in 1919.
I have found very little specifically for the SuN adder, but there are some ads from the early 1910s for Seidel & Naumann's other products. The two older Dutch items are an announcement of the trademarks that S&N is about to start selling their "improved Singer" sewing machines in the Netherlands, and a reply notification from Singer's lawyer that they are not allowed to use the Singer name in any way to sell their machines.
Here are the patents relating to the SuN chain adder. Bernhard Behr based his design on the Arithstyle chain adder devised by Henry Goldman a decade earlier.
| Patent | Filing date | Publish date | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB 1899 10,237 | 15-05-1899 | 14-04-1900 | Henry Goldman | Chain adder |
| GB 1908 03,402 | 14-02-1908 | 15-02-1909 | Bernhard Carl Max Behr | Chain adder with two registers |
| GB 1911 18,737 | 19-08-1911 | 11-04-1912 | Bernhard Behr | Chain adder. See also:
AT 55,820 B; US 1,096,012; CA 138,507; DE 249,606; FR 433,170 |
| GB 1912 09,013 | 16-04-1912 | 16-01-1913 | Seidel & Naumann | Carry mechanism. See also:
AT 61,025 B; FR 443,000 |
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