It was a binary electrically driven mechanical calculator with limited programmability, reading instructions from punched tape.

Its user interface was used throughout during the 120 years that the mechanical calculator industry lasted.

After three years of effort and fifty prototypes, he was one of the first two inventors of the mechanical calculator.

The mechanical calculator was also developed as a tool for hand computation.

For 40 years, the arithmometer was the only mechanical calculator available for sale and was sold all over the world.