Description

John "Bud" Benson Wilbur sits on a stool to operate his simultaneous calculator, a wall-mounted apparatus resembling a set of long, low bookshelves filled with tilting metal plates on pulley systems.

Original caption 1 "Engineers Delight... is this machine designed by Dr. Wilbur - who sits beside it - for solving up to nine simultaneous equations. See full details opposite page.", Original caption 2: "The simultaneous calculator, a new machine developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by Dr. John B. Wilbur of the Department of Civil Engineering for the solution of simultaneous linear algebraic equations to nine or more unknowns. Once the conditions of the equations have been set on the machine, a single movement of the mechanism carries out in a few seconds mathematics processes that might require hours or days by ordinary methods. The calculator has 13,000 parts, including more than 600 feet of steel tape and nearly 1,000 ballbearing pulleys. Dr. Wilbur is shown with the machine", "Dr. John B. Wilbur of Dept. of Civil Eng.", Used in: Technology Review