I learned about the most delightful little device today at @SFCB.
You know these typical old-school restaurant bills in America?pic.twitter.com/vgrSfcwhvh
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Say hello to the Ultra-Force numbering device. It seems like a regular rotary stamp. You can rotate the digits to whatever number you want by hand if you want to. But that extruded typeset numero is not a weird accident.pic.twitter.com/fAabIoKnCj
Turns out, it is actually a *button*. Each press increments a number by one. That’s more convenient, I suppose, just pressing it every time you print another copy… …but here’s the kicker: the button is meant to be pressed by the printing press itself.pic.twitter.com/HYKNmOMKkv
Every time the press goes down to make an impression on the digits and the №, it also presses that numero, incrementing the number just before printing. It’s so wholesome!pic.twitter.com/LXa7sx9A6N
I love the ingenuity and practicality of this little device. It is tangentially related to earliest automatic typing machines, or mail merge, or… We haven’t tried it out today, but if I ever do more letterpress – I would love to use it, just for fun.pic.twitter.com/7Mb8kX8rON
And, if anyone is interested, here’s the patent: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/cd/33/9a/64ad4b15256df6/US1798176.pdf …
/cc @robinsloan + @GlennF + @mkirschenbaum
(It’s funny how one could confuse it for an old, broken counter that’s really, *really* hard to press – but the point is that this is a rare button not meant for human fingers!)
Added to all that, you can get ones which changed after printing twice or three times, or count forwards or backwards, on in twos, etc. They could come with spare number wheels for some of these and a gadget to help dismantle/reassemble them to clean, repair or change function.
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