Background
He was born on April 10, 1838 in New Hartford, Connecticut, the son of Stephen Baldwin and Julia (Pardee) Baldwin, both of New England stock. In the summer of 1840 his parents moved to Nunda, Livingston County, New York.
He was born on April 10, 1838 in New Hartford, Connecticut, the son of Stephen Baldwin and Julia (Pardee) Baldwin, both of New England stock. In the summer of 1840 his parents moved to Nunda, Livingston County, New York.
He graduated from the Nunda Institute where he specialized in mathematics, surprising his teachers by memorizing the decimal of Pi to 128 places, which he was still able to repeat up to the time of his death. In 1854 he was enrolled at Union College, Schenectady, N. Y. , but was prevented from finishing his course by the illness of his father, the management of whose architectural business he was forced to take over.
The following year Baldwin applied for a patent on an arrowhead self-coupler for railroad cars. Five years later, in 1860, he was instrumental in securing a patent on a corn-planting machine which was a pioneer among machines of this class. In 1869 he went to St. Louis where he worked out a number of inventions. The metal lace latch now found on so many shoes he first devised to aid him in quick dressing. He also invented an anemometer, an instrument for recording the direction of the wind; a registering step for street cars, recording the number of passengers carried, and a street indicator geared from the axle showing the name of each street in succession as the car passed. A little later came the recording lumber-measure--a machine which automatically measured and recorded four different kinds of lumber at the same time. The successful operation of this device led to the conception of a calculating machine of an entirely new type, capable of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, each with equal facility.
He conceived the need of a smaller figuring machine and this led to the conception of an arithmometer which he patented on July 28, 1874. This was one of the first adding machines ever sold in the United States. The calculating machine was placed on exhibition at the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, and in 1875 was awarded the John Scott medal for the most meritorious invention of the year.
Baldwin arranged to have his invention perfected and produced by a Philadelphia machine works, but the concern collapsed in the failure of Jay Cooke and the ensuing panic. In 1876, therefore, he started a small shop in St. Louis, where he brought out a permutation drawer lock, a printing-press counter, a mortar mixer, and a three-speed bicycle. During these years he employed William S. Burroughs to do model work on his calculating machine; about 1880 Burroughs started work on his own adding machine with a keyboard set up. The Baldwin computing engine was invented in 1890, followed in 1902 by the Baldwin calculator very much like the Monroe calculating machine of today. In 1911 Baldwin became acquainted with Jay R. Monroe at that time associated with the legal department of the Western Electric Company of New York. Monroe, after demonstration of the machine, saw its possibilities and the two joined hands to redesign the machine and make it as nearly perfect as possible in its adaptation to modern business. The result was the Monroe Calculating Machine Company which Baldwin happily lived to see filling no small place in the fields of science and business.
In 1872, Baldwin was married to Mary Denniston and moved to Philadelphia, where a small machine-shop was obtained and he started the development of his calculating machine.
