What operations could Baldwin's initial 1875 prototype perform?
Answer
Addition and subtraction only
Baldwin's very first prototype of the pinwheel machine, developed in 1875, was engineered only to perform the foundational arithmetic operations of addition and subtraction. This initial focus on the simplest processes was necessary to prove the viability of the mechanical concept involving the interaction between the stepped pins and the result register. It was only after this initial success and subsequent refinement that the mechanism was adapted to handle more complex operations like multiplication and division, which are fundamentally derived from repeated applications of addition and subtraction, respectively, often facilitated by the sliding carriage mechanism.
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