Boss: Experts say that humor on the job relieves tension in this time of downsizing. Knock, knock.
Employee: Who's there?
Boss: Not you anymore.
Adding machine patentIn 1888, William Seward Burroughs of St. Louis, Missouri, received patents on four adding machine applications (No. 388,116-388,119), the first U.S. patents for a "Calculating-Machine" that the inventor would continue to improve and successfully market. One year after making his first patent application on 10 Jan 1885, he incorporated his business as the American Arithmometer Corporation of St. Louis, in Jan 1886, with an authorized capitalization of $100,000. After Burrough's early death in 1898, after moving from St. Louis to Detroit, Michigan, that company reorganized as the Burroughs Adding Machine Co., incorporated in Jan 1905, with a capital of $5 million. The new name was in tribute to the inventor.« |
