Numbering Machine Styles

Styling That Is Timeless

Numbers In History

Bates numbering machines draw their roots back to 1890. The company was once owned by Thomas Edison, and has been producing numbering and dating printers ever since. It is interesting to note that much of the technology developed by Edison and the Bates Company is still in use today. Although manufacturing may have introduced robotics and other computer technology, the numbering chore still goes to an ingenious object that draws its heritage from the industrial age. 

It’s As Peculiar As A Clockwork Orange

This clockwork type, complex mechanism employs numerous, familiar office technologies. Aspects of the self-inking stamp, typewriter, and the mechanical adding machine all come together in this curiously durable design.

Starting with the profile of the device, its look and design hark back to the same school that delivered belt-mounted change machines used by newsstands and green grocers. Also in this family of design are the pricing stampers used in grocery stores that would emit the familiar ca chink ca chunk sound.

The actual print operates much like a typewriter with multiple metal wheels engraved with numbers. These wheels turn in succession powered by the stamping motion of the worker using the machine.

The actual rotation is powered by a mechanism that might normally handle complex calculations on an adding machine. The reason for this is that a company might wish that the numbering appear random and as such be indecipherable to the consumer.

Computer Based Automatic Numbering Machines

Modern manufacturing is moving more towards automated numbering systems. Because of tracking requirements, automated systems offer the ability to create machine-readable numbering in the form of Bar Codes and Magnetic Imaging Character Recognition (MICR).

It is interesting to note that one of the biggest advantages to using mechanical as opposed to computer-based numbering is due to computer-based systems depending upon random number generators, leading to occasional problems.

Problems arise when ones and zeros work their way into the equations used to generate so-called random numbers, hereby taking away randomness due to that simple characteristic we all learned in grade school, when a number is multiplied by one or zero the result is very predictable. This is an issue the mechanical device simply does not have.