Burroughs, William S.
Michael R. Williams · Encyclopedia of Computer Science · 2003
Williams Seward Burroughs (Fig. 1) was born on 28 January 1855 in Auburn, New York, and died on 5 September 1898 in Citronelle, Alabama. He is immortalized in the name of the Burroughs firm, but, unlike some of the other early manufacturers of mechanical calculators, his firm did not adopt that name until after Burroughs himself had died. It was through his early experience as a junior bank clerk that he developed an appreciation for the types of calculations that were required in a business environment. In 1881 he moved to St Louis and worked in his father's shop, making models for castings, which gave him the background knowledge required for his mechanical inventions.