The history of the Victor company
Victor Adding Machine Co. with the chief designer Oliver David Johantgen (1875-1932), an engineer with a long (since 1896) experience in the field of mechanical calculators and a holder of several patents. Victor was a fledgling company in 1918 when the operator of a successful chain of meat markets gave a Victor salesman $100 for what he thought would buy an adding machine. Instead, he got 10 shares of the company’s stock. In an effort to protect his investment, that the man – Carl Buehler – became a director of Victor in September 1918 and was elected president of the company three months later.
The first Victor adding machine, Model 110, was introduced in 1919. The company sold 100000 of its Model 110 by 1926. The 200 series had printing facility and the 300 series, appeared in 1923, had 6 8 or 10 columns and were improved and had models for subtracting possibility and sterling currency. The 500 series had an optional internal electro motor appeared in 1931.
1914 modern 10-Key-Block design was introduced by Oscar J.Sundstrand (of SUNDSTRAND please see there for more).
In 1921, Carl Buehler selected his 24-year-old son, A.C., as Vice President of Operations and advised him to operate the company by “working like the devil, but treat the employees right and allow them to make some money”. Carl also believed in reinvesting most of the profits so the company could grow. A.C. assumed control of the company on the death of Carl Buehler in 1932.
Victor made additional contributions to the war effort, manufacturing an aircraft compass and a B-24 bomber turret gun sight. This was a revolutionary piece of technology that allowed pilots to drop bombs with greater precision and accuracy, with the goal minimizing civilian casualties.
In 1958 the Victor company had reached their 1.5 Million calculator sales.
In 1961 they united with the Comptometer company Felt & Tarrant to form the Victor-Comptometer-Corp.
Victor developed its mechanical calculators which sold into the early 1970s. It was also a pioneer in electronic desktop calculators incorporating integrated circuits, though this was unsuccessful. In the mid-1960s it had contracted with General Micro-electronics, a subsidiary of Philco-Ford, to produce the integrated circuits for electronic calculators. Although prototype calculators were demonstrated, problems involved in mass-producing the chips could not be overcome at the time, and the development contract was dropped in 1968.
In 1968 Victor contracted with Nixdorf of Germany to market in the U.S.A., under the Victor name, the electronic desktop calculators manufactured by the Nixdorf's Wanderer subsidiary. Hand-held calculators under the Victor name were manufactured in U.S.A., Canada, and Japan.
For close to a century, Victor has proudly sold a wide variety of products. These have included cash registers, computers.
They survived into the "Electronic Age" with a high-quality CP/M Micro- Computer Victor-9000 - but failed in the race with the IBM-PCs.