the first computers' walls of blinking
lights; spinning reels & AI voice: relay-
switches that could be heard for blocks,
heated to hundreds of degrees, & were
kept behind cement walls:

In 1886, the American Arithmometer
   Company is established in St. Louis,
Missouri to produce and sell an adding
machine invented by William Seward
Burroughs,  grandfather of Beat author
William S. Burroughs [             ];

In 1904, six years after WS Burroughs I's
death, the company moved to Detroit &
changed its name to the Burroughs Adding
Machine Company; soon BAMC was the
biggest adding machine company in America;

Accuracy was the foundation of Burroughs'
work; no ordinary materials were good enough

for his creation.    His drawings were made on
metal plates which could not expand or shrink
by the smallest fraction of an inch; he worked
with hardened tools sharpened to fine points,
& when he struck a center or drew a line, it was
done under a microscope;

William Seward Burroughs I invented a
"calculating machine", first patent filed
in 1885, designed to ease the monotony
of clerical work. He was a founder of the
American Arithmometer Company in 1886,
which later became the Burroughs Adding
Machine Company in 1904, then the Burroughs
Corporation in 1953; & in 1986, merged
with Sperry Corporation to form Unisys:

William Seward Burroughs I was posthumously
inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame