They may seem like Rube Goldberg machines today, but mechanical adding machines were considered the closest thing to computers not long ago: heaps of gears, levers, and springs engineered to do the ...

As part of All Things Considered's series on now-obsolete sounds, listeners recall fond memories of the old mechanical adding machine. We asked listeners to send sounds from older technologies, things ...

Tax preparers no longer use a horse to get to work or a washtub to rinse laundry, yet many continue to keep around a once-indispensable tool that’s slowly becoming antique. Processing Content “I ...