Typewriter Collection: Accounting Machines
This page lists typewriters which are enhanced for numerical work. It took a while for typewriters to get a tabulator — a mechanism to quickly move the carriage to one or more specific columns on the page. But once that happened, basic tabulators became very popular and even a default feature on most machines.
Tabulators evolved further to be useful for accounting and bookkeeping, specifically in the form of the decimal tabulator, which allows aligning numbers on their decimal point. The first instance of this type which I am aware of, and which is fairly well-known among typewriter collectors, is the Gorin tabulator, patented in 1896.
The Gorin tabulator is a fairly simple device which could be added to multiple typewriter models, including machines from Remington and Smith Premier. The Gorin tabulator was later improved by Remington, which made it a standard feature on many of its typewriters.
In addition to tabulators, mechanisms were devised to allow adding and subtracting numbers right from the typewriter. These machines are usually known as accounting or bookkeeping machines, the latter being the more sophisticated ones. Specifically, the Wahl mechanism, patented in 1908, was initially devised for Remington machines but also used on a few other brands, like Smith Premier (Remington eventually acquired the Wahl patents).
Besides Wahl/Remington, other companies made bookkeeping machines, like Underwood. The latter was regularly advertised in the 1920s, but these machines appear extremely rare nowadays. It doesn’t seem that Underwood pursued this line of machines for very long. In Europe, manufacturers used mechanisms similar if not identical to Wahl’s. It is unclear if those were licensed, copied after the expiration of patents, or something else.
The collection
As of April 2026, I count 11 machines with a decimal tabulator in my collection:
- Three of them have the Gorin Tabulator (the earliest machine, from 1896, missing the “Gorin” label)
- Five of them have the Wahl mechanism.
Some of these machines are in good condition and only need a quick cleaning, while others require a full restoration. Some of them are quite rare, while others are more common. One of them, the Model-121, is fully restored.
I am not showing here later machines like the IBM Memory Typewriter which include a decimal tabulator feature as well.
During | After | TWDB
Totalizers
Totalizers are the mechanical counters that Wahl accounting and bookkeeping machines use to keep track of totals. They are placed on a rack in front of the machine. They are fairly simple devices, containing wheels with numbers: a rotation of a given wheel carries over to the next wheel as needed. Numbers can be incremented or decremented. Totalizers came in all sizes, from 4 digits to 16 digits. Some are column totalizers, meaning that they would keep track of totals for a specific column on the page. Others were row totalizers, meaning that they would keep track of totals for an entire row.
I am lucky that some of my machines came with totalizers - but some didn’t (based on pictures and sales online, this seems to be a common issue). In 2019, I bought 2 totalizers from a third party, and in 2022, I bought a parts Model-23, which came with 6 totalizers. These were in poor cosmetic condition, but they are entirely restorable. In particular, the machine came with a row totalizer, which so far is the only one I have in my collection.
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