Provenance: Grimme Calculating Machine Museum, Natalis & Co AG, Braunschweig.Waldbauer Collection No. 2397 Lit.: The Braunschweig GNC monthly magazine November/December 1925, Braunschweig: p. 524 with illustration. Described there as follows: Hahn machine. Invention of the pastor Philipp Matthäus Hahn, Echterdingen 1774. Manufactured in 1805 to1820 by the watchmaker Joseph Christian Schuster, Ansbach, who worked as a journeyman for Hahn from 1778-1780 and later married her sister.

Shuster's calculator was one of the last of the highly individually built and elaborately ornamented calculators of the pre-industrial era; it has 1052 parts. Calculating machines of the 17th and 18th centuries are extremely rare. There are in fact only a ten calculating machines remaining from that period, which are four species, that is can perform all four basic operations of arithmetic, (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division). During the baroque age there was neither a commercial nor a scientific need for mechanical calculating machines. Tradesmen still calculated using calculation boards, tables and reckoning counters. And in the sciences, calculating methods were unknown or just beginning to be developed. Thus, the clergyman Philipp Matthäus Hahn (1739-1790), Schuster's mechanical master and brother-in-law, had built his calculating machines 'for the propagation of the Gospel'.

At the time they were built, these calculating machines were not used practically. They were destined for the curiosity cabinets; the 'Kunstkammer' of princes and nobility. Some, such as the gloriously decorated machine by Johann Jakob Sauter could have no other purpose!

The first calculating machine put in serial production was the Arithmomètre (arithmometer) by the French entrepreneur Charles-Xavier Thomas de Colmar (1785-1870).

Colmar conceived the idea of the arithmometer during his lengthy stay with the armies of Marchall Soult, where he needed to perform a lot of calculations. This became even more important in his eyes when, in 1819, he was appointed General Manager of the Phoenix insurance company and, later, when he founded the insurance companies Soleil (1829) and Aigle (1843).

Of course, others had tried before him to make calculating machines in quantities: let’s mention only Pascal, Leibniz, Braun, Morland, Hahn, Sauter, Schuster, Müller, Stanhope  (especially Hahn tried to manufacture in quantity his machines but without success). Also these machines, often defective and very expensive, made it impossible to commercialize. Moreover, it was too early to produce in large quantities a calculator in the 17th or 18th century. Human society did not yet need such devices and the technologies, needed for such mass production, have not been developed yet. In the middle of the 19th century, with the industrial revolution, technological obstacles were overcome. More and more enterprises, scientific, military and government institutions became eager to accept a calculator. In the nick of time, came Thomas de Colmar.¹