US2638275A - Accumulator for use in statistical machines - Google Patents

Description

May 12, 1953 A. THOMAS ACCUMULATOR FOR USE IN STATISTICAL MACHINES 4 Sheets-Sheet 1 Original Filed Jan. 28, 1948 y 2, 1953 A. THOMAS 2,638,275

ACCUMULATOR FOR USE IN STATISTICAL MACHINES Original Filed Jan. 28, 1948 4 Sheets-Sheet 2 May 12, 1953 A. THOMAS 2,638,275

ACCUMULATOR FOR USE IN STATISTICAL MACHINES Original Filed Jan. 28, 1948 4 Sheets-Sheet 3 1953 A. THOMAS 2,638,275

ACCUMULATOR FOR USE IN STATISTICAL MACHINES Original Filed Jan. 28, 1948 4 Sheets-Sheet 4 7 F/G. 6 -2; 4 29 5 3/ 2/ 4 4/32 I V /3e 35 Ai 'T// ,W& MP

3 M W flier/me 7/40/ 445 JLL/JMJ Patented May 12, 1953 ACCUMULATOR FOR USE IN STATISTICAL MACHINES Arthur Thomas, Wallington, England, assignor to Powers-Samas Accounting Machines Limited, London, England, a British company Original application January 28, 1948, Serial No.

Divided and this application January 18, 1950, Serial No. 139,270. In Great Britain February 3, 1947 3 Claims.

This invention relates to accumulators in general, and in particular to an accumulator of the continuous or creep carry type.

The present application is a division of my copending application Serial No. 4,765, filed January 28, 1948, now Patent No. 2,568,523 issued September 18, 1951.

A number of creep carry accumulators are known in which the carry mechanism comprises epicyclic gearing which by its nature, has to be arranged to allow for the one gear ratio factor that is added to or subtracted from the revolution of the mechanism as a whole, owing to the rotation of the whole unit. Thus, with epicyclic carry mechanisms, arrangements are made whereby during the carry one is deducted from the ratio and a 9 to 1 gearing is, for example, employed to obtain a 10 to 1 carry.

The disadvantage of the epicyclic forms of carry mechanism is that they are limited in the uses to which they may be put. For example, these carry mechanisms are suitable for accumulator mechanisms operating according to the decimal system, but are not suitable for accommodating sterling amounts, due to the fact that in the carry from the tens of shillings column to the units of pounds column the gearing is only 2 to 1 and this type of carry only operates satisfactorily with higher gear reductions.

An object of the present invention is to provide a creep carry accumulator which can be employed to register values according to the decimal system, or according to the sterling system, or if desired, according to the avoirdupois weight system.

A further object of the invention is to provide an accumulator which, due to its construction can readily be manufactured and assembled, and which can also be made up from independent units of which each unit comprises one digital column. This feature is especially useful in a sterling accumulator, as, for example, in one instance it may be required to register values including farthing amounts, while in another instance values including only pence and shillings may be registered.

Still another object of the invention is to so construct each such unit that the actuator for that digital column remains unchanged whether the unit befor adding twelfths as in the pence column, tenths as in the units of shillings column, halves as in the tens of shillings column, or any other fractional amounts.

Another object of the invention is to make all of the units'thesame, the variable elements being contained in the inter-order connecting gearing.

According to the invention thereis provided in each order of the accumulator, an actuator, a differential cage meshing with the actuator, 21. pair of intermeshing planetary gears carried by said cage, a sun gear meshing with one of said planetary gears, a driving gear coaxial and rotatable with said sun gear, a resultant gear meshing with said driving gear, and a second sun gear rotated in accordance with the carry from lower orders in mesh with the second of said planetary gears.

The invention also contemplates the use of visible dials to indicate the amounts registered in the several orders of the accumulator, and where such dials are utilized means are provided to ensure that fractional carry amounts are not registered thereon.

One other object of the invention is to so construct and arrange the dials and the carry repressing means as to prevent carry amounts from being indicated on the dials, simply and efii-' ciently, even though said amounts be registered on the resultant wheels of the accumulator.

Other objects and structural details of the invention will be apparent from the following description when read in connection with the ac-' companying drawing, wherein:

Fig. 1 is a side elevation, partly in section, of a statistical machine having the invention applied thereto;

Fig. 2 is a plan of part of the accumulator in: dicated generally in Fig. 1 by the reference letter A, the denominational order units being shown diagrammatically;

Fig. 3 is a side elevation of one of the accumulator units, some parts of the mechanism being broken away to show the integers normally hidden behind such parts, the unit illustrated being one employed for tens or hundreds of pounds;

Fig. 4 is a plan of the accumulator unit shown in Fig. 3;

Fig. 5 is a perspective View from the rear of one of the accumulator units, the parts being shown diagrammatically and in partial exploded disposition;

Fig. 6 is a section through the difierential gearing; and

Fig. 7 is a perspective view of a detail showing compensating mechanism for maintaining a figure on an indicating wheel in reading position.

The accumulator about to be described is shown as applied to a statistical machine (Fig. 1) substantially identical with the one disclosed in British patent application No. 26,139/45 and only a' brief reference to the major features oi'that machine will be made herein.

In this machine, sterling amounts, assumed, in the present instance, to be in shillings and pence, are sensed from perforated record cards and are transfered to accumulator mechanism as indicated by the reference letter A in Fig. 1 at relatively high speed, to be registered therein in pounds, shillings and pence. For example, a sum of eighty three shillings and nine pence sensed from a record card will be registered in the accumulator as four pounds, three shillings and nine pence. In keeping with this mode of operation the accumulator, illustrated diagrammatically in Fig. 2, comprises the following denominational order sections; a pence section P, a

units of shillings section S, a tens of shillings section SI, a units of pounds section L, a tens of pounds section Li, a hundreds of pounds section L2, and a thousands of pounds section L3.

In the machine of Fig. 1 record cards are fed 7 from a magazine It, beneath sensing pins I! mounted in a pin box 12 reciprocated by a lever 13 and eccentric l4 driven from the main shaft I5 of the machine. The pins, should they pass through perforations in a record card, transfer the information so sensed to flexible cables 15 which in turn operate plungers 11. These plungers cause pins on pivoted arms, not shown, but which are fully described along with the rest of the accumulator actuating mechanism in the copending application of Arthur Thomas, Serial No. 700,711, to be projected through apertures 18 in a plate I9; and a pin so projected engages the tail 26 of a latching member for a pawl 2|, tripping the latch and freeing the pawl 2| to engage with the ratchet teeth of an accumulator wheel 22. There is an accumulator wheel 22 associated with each of the denominational order sections above described.

To the rear face (as viewed in Fig. 1) of each accumulator wheel 22 there is secured for rotation therewith a driving wheel 23 which meshes with an idler gear 24.

From this point it will be convenient, for the present, to ignore the pence unit, as there is in the present instance no lower denominational order unit from which a carry is eifected to the pence unit, and this unit, therefore, differs slightly from the remaining units, all of which are similarly constructed. Reference to the construction of the pence unit will be made later.

Each of the idler gears 24 meshes with peripheral teeth on a differential cage 25 (Figs. 3, 5, and 6) which is riveted or otherwise fastened to a flange 26 on a spindle 21 journaled in unit frame plates 28 and 30. An annular bearing member 3| (Fig. 4) secured to the cage 25 has positioned therein two short spindles 32 and 33 (Fig. 3) on which are journaled a pair of intermeshing planetary gears 34 and 35, respectively, said planetary gears extending into apertures 29 in cage 25 (Fig. 3). The intermeshing planetary gears 35 and 34 (Figs. 3, 5, and 6) also mesh with first and second sun gears 36 and 31, respectively, the first sun gear being fixed on a collar 38 loose ly mounted on spindle 21, and the second sun gear 31 being mounted on a collar 45 to be more fully described hereinafter. Also fixed to collar 38 is a driving gear 41 meshing with a resultant gear 42 which, as will become apparent hereinafter, indicates by its angular position the total of the input and carry amounts accumulated in the denominational order of which it is a part, but which, in the present instance, in order to make said total visible, in turn meshes with a gear 43 fixed to an indicator dial by a sleeve 45 journaled on a spindle 46 (Fig. 7) carried in a bearing arm 41 pivoted at 48 to the frame plate 28.

, In operation, gear 24 imparts units of rotation to cage 25, which, the second sun gear 31 being considered as fixed for the present, causes planetary gear 34 to roll around said sun gear. The rotation of gear 34, rotates gear 35 and through it the first sun gear 36. However, the bodily movement of gear 35 about the center of cage 25 also causes rotation of sun gear 36, so that the latter has imparted to it a multiple of the angular movement imparted to the cage by gear 24. In the present instance the ratios are such that planetary gears 34 and 35 multiply the movements of the cage by two, so that sun gear 36 and driving gear 4! which is fixed to rotate therewith, receive twice the angular displacement of the cage. As it is desired to rotate the resultant gear 42 in the ratio of 1 to l with the cage, however, said resultant gear has a reduction ratio with the driving gear equal to the factor by which the planetary gears multiply the movements of said cage, in the present instance 2 to 1, so as to compensate for the multiplication of cage movement by said planetary gears. The indicator wheel 44 is preferably made with two sets of numerals and the gear 43, by which it is driven from the resultant wheel, is made with a number of teeth appropriate to allow a one tooth movement of the resultant gear to rotate the dial one digital space.

To effect the carry each resultant wheel 42 has a carry member 50 projecting laterally and engaging in a slot 5| in a fiange 52 of a sleeve 53, to which is also fixed the first gear 54 of a train of reductiongearing which also includes an idle pinion 55 and a last gear 56 fixed to the sleeve 40 and thereby to the second sun gear 31 in the next higher denominational order.

Thus a fraction of the movement of one resultant wheel 42 is transmitted to the second sun gear 31 of next higher order, and thereby to the planetary gears 34 and 35, the latter of which rotates the first sun gear 36 and the driving gear 41 an amount equal to the rotation of the second sun gear. It will be remembered that driving gear 4! is, in the present instance, in the ratio of 1 to 2 with the resultant gear, which results in that the carry movements transmitted to the driving gear from the resultant wheel of lower order are halved in passing from said driving gear to the resultant gear meshing therewith. In view of this, the inter-order reduction gearing is provided with a ratio equal to half the carry ratio between the two orders. For example, if it is desired to carry tenths, the re-' duction ratio is 5 to 1, for twelfths it is 6 to 1-, for halves as between the tens of shillings and units of pounds orders his 1 to 1.

In operation the second sun gear 31 instead of being fixed as assumed above, may be rotating due 'to a carry from the lower order, so that as planetary gear 34 rolls around said sun gear due to an input to cage 25, the rate of rotation of said planetary gear on its axis is momentarily increased. Thus the planetary gear pair multiplies the movements of cage 25 and transmits the carry at the same time.

When the mechanism is in operation, therefore, the carry is continuous and means are provided to ensure that the indicator wheels 44 (Figs. 3, 5, and 7) read correctly, that is to say, they stand at whole number positions only, not at some fractional distance between two characters. For this purpose each indicator wheel is, as mentioned above, supported by a pivoted arm 41, which as presently to be described, permits of fractional counter rotative movements of said wheel. To ensure that the gear 43, by which the dial is driven from the resultant wheel 42, does not disengage from said resultant gear, the axis of the pivot 48 of arm 41 is located in the plane containing the axes of the resultant wheel 42 and the indicator gear 43 (Fig. 3). A compensating cam 57 (Fig. 7) having, in instances where the indicator wheel has twenty characters (two sets of characters -9), two peripheral steps, is secured to the indicator dial. The peripheral surface of the cam rises gradually from the bottom of each of said steps to the top of the other step. Engaging with the periphery of cam 51 is a follower roll '58 carried by one arm of a bellcrank 60 pivoted at 6|. The other arm of the bell-crank has secured thereto a pin 62 which engages the arm 4'! of next higher order. By these means, as the indicator wheel is rotated and the carry is effected to the next order, the cam 51' gradually rocks the bell-crank 60 about its pivot 5| and the pin 62 rocks the arm 4! of the next higher order counter-clockwise in Fig. 7 a distance suiiicient to compensate, by the rolling of the indicator gear on the resultant gear, for the fractional rotation on the dial due to the carry. Thus a character on the indicator wheel remains in reading position during the passage of the indicator wheel of lower order from 0 to 9. However, as said lower order wheel passes from 9. to 0, the roll 58 falls from the high to the low point of cam 51, so that the pin 62 suddenly disengages the arm 41 of the next higher unit and the said arm drops clockwise a distance sufficient to rotate the associated dial one digital space and present the next higher character in reading position.

A sample operation of the units of the accumulator mechanism will now be described with reference to the units of pounds unit, the tens of pounds unit, and the hundreds of pounds unit, it being understood, however, that the other denominational units also operate in the manner about to be described.

First, let it be assumed that the values three, five, and seven are to be entered in the tens of pounds unit, which is initially set at zero, and that no carry is being effected from the units of pounds column. In this case the pawl 2| (Fig. 1) first feeds the accumultaor wheel 22 a distance of three teeth and the driving gear 23 and idler 24 are turned through corresponding angular distances. The sun gear 31 (Fig. 5) between the tens of pounds unit and the units of pounds unit is held against rotation by the resultant wheel of the latter unit so that the movements transmitted to the tens of pounds cage 25 by gear 24 cause the planetary gear 34 to roll around said sun gear, and through gears 35, 36, and 4| to enter the value three into the tens of pounds resultant wheel 42. Setting the resultant wheel to three, of course, rotates dial 44 through gear 43, and three is indicated thereon at the readin position. During the rotation of the tens of pounds resultant Wheel, the pin 50 thereon rotates the flange 5| associated with the first gear 54 of the hundreds of pounds unit so that the hundreds of pounds resultant wheel is moved from zero to zero and three tenths. Due, however, to the action of the compensating cam 51 on the tens of pounds indicator dial and its associate bell-crank 50, the zero registered on the hundreds of pounds indicator wheel remainsv in reading position. The rotation of the resultant gear 42 in the hundreds of pounds unit is efiected through the train of reduction gears 54, 55, and 56, of which gear 54 is the first. gear and gear 56 the last gear. The latter rotates the sun gear 31 which in turn rotates the planetary pinion 34 of the hundreds of pounds unit. The pinion 34 rotates the other planetary pinion 35 and this, in turn, rotates the sun gear 36 which, being coupled with the gear 4|, efiects rotation of the resultant wheel of hundreds of pounds unit.

When during the next cycle the values five entered, the gears operate as just described, but with the result that the tens of pounds indicator wheel is rotated a further five teeth to register an eight in the reading position and the resultant wheel of the hundreds of pounds unit is turned from zero and three tenths to zero and eight tenths, but the zero on the hundreds of pounds indicator dial remains in reading position.

During the third cycle, upon entering seven the gear 43 on the indicator dial of the tens of pounds unit is turned a further seven teeth with the result that the indicator is turned to register a five in the reading position. The rotation of the seven teeth of gear 43, is, of course, continuous, but as zero registers on the indicator wheel the roll 58 on bell-crank 60 (Fig. 7) drops suddenly over the step on cam 51 with the result that the arm 34 carrying the indicator wheel of the hundreds of pounds unit drops back and this indicator wheel registers a one in the reading position. At the end of the cycle, when the seven has been entered and the five appears on the tens of pounds indicator dial, the indicator wheel of the hundreds of pounds unit shows a one in the readin position but its associate resultant wheel registers one and five tenths.

Let it now be assumed that the indicator wheel of the tens of pounds unit registers three and that a four is being entered simultaneously with a carry from the units of pounds column.

In this instance, the tens of pounds unit will be operated in the manner just described above in so far as the registration of the four is concerned, but while the cage 25 is rotating to eflect this registration the planetary gears 34 and 35 (Fig. 5) are being positively driven by the last gear 56 of the train of reduction gearing associated with the units of pounds column, with the result that the angular velocity of gear 4| is momentarily increased and a five is entered into the resultant wheel instead of a four. Thus, the number registered on the indicator wheel of the tens of pounds unit at the end of this cycle is eight.

Any suitable means may be used to restore the accumulator to zero, that shown in the drawing being a preferred one. This means is fully disclosed in the copending application of Arthur Thomas, filed January 28, 1948, S. N. 4,765, but will be referred to briefly herein as an aid to an understanding of the present invention.

The lateral face of each resultant wheel 42 (Fig. 3) is provided with a plurality of equi spaced studs 63 for cooperation with a pawl 64 pivoted at 65 to an arm 65 itself loosely pivoted about the axis of the resultant wheel. The angular spacing of the studs is determined by the amounts being registered on the resultant wheel, for example, if tenths are being registered, the studs are located in radial alignment with every tenth tooth space of the wheel, if twelfths are being registered, in radial alignment with every twelfth.

tooth space, etc. The pawl 64 is normally drawn into position for engagement with a stud 63 by a spring 6'! connecting the pawl with arm 66, but as the wheel rotates the studs cam the pawl outward in passing it. To zeroize the accumulator the arms 66 are rocked counter-clockwise about their pivots in rapid succession beginning with the wheel of lowest order, while the machine is at rest. As the arm rocks, the pawl moves up to, engages, and moves alon with it, the stud 63 which stands in its path, the amount of movement of the pawl being fixed to rotate the resultant wheel to a zero position. The means for rocking each arm 66 include a rearwardly extending link 88 which is connected by another link 10 (Fig. 1) to a Geneva movement arrangement on a zeroizing shaft H which is rotated by hand at the appropriate times through a handle 12.

While there is above described but one embodiment of the invention, it is possible to produce still other embodiments without departure from the inventive concept abov disclosed, and it is, therefore, desired that only such limitations shall be imposed on the appended claims as are stated therein, or required by the prior art.

What I claim as new, and, desire to secure by Letters Patent, is:

1. In each order of a crawl carry accumulator the combination of an actuator, a differential cage meshing with said actuator, a pair of intermeshing planetary gears carried by said cage, a sun gear meshing with one of said planetary gears, a driving gear coaxial and rotatable with said sun gear, a resultant gear meshing with said driving gear, and a second sun gear rotated by the movement of the resultant gear of the next lower order in accordance with the carry from lower orders, in mesh with th second of said planetary gears.

2. In each order of a crawl carry accumulator the combination of an actuator, a difierential cage meshing with said actuator, a pair of intermeshing planetary gears carried by said cage, a sun gear meshing with one of said planetary gears, a driving gear coaxial and rotatable with said sun gear, a resultant gear meshing with said driving gear, a second sun gear coaxial with the first said sun gear and in mesh with the second of said planetary gears, and a train of reduction gears, the first gear of which is coupled to the resultant gear of the next lower order and the last gear of which is coaxial and rotatable with said second sun gear.

3. In a crawl carry accumulator the combination in each order of an actuator, a differential cage moved through differential angular distances by said actuator, a pair of planetary gears carried by said cage, a sun gear meshing with one of said planetary gears and moved thereby through a multiple of the angular distances moved by said cage, a driving gear coaxial and rotatable with said sun gear, a resultant gear meshing with said driving gear and moved thereby through differential distances equal to those of said cage, and a second sun gear rotated by the movement of the resultant gear of the next lower order to receive the carry from lower order, meshing with the second of said planetary gears.

ARTHUR THOMAS.

References Cited in the file of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS Number Name Date 484,814 Osborn Oct. 25, 1892 1,349,049 Crumpton Aug. 10, 1920 1,356,916 Gumprecht Oct. 26, 1920 1,913,983 Gardner June 13, 1933 2,089,682 Chase Aug. 10, 1937 2,214,029 Mixer Sept. 10, 1940 2,344,627 Mixer Mar. 21, 1944 2,405,626 Williams Aug. 13, 1946 2,482,935 Rast Sept. 2'7, 1949

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