Original Odhner AVK
One of the first "improved" Odhners with the designation "Original Odhner". It is "dans son jus", with original baseplate complete with recess for easy clearing of the result register, and decal of the seller, which is "NYA PAPPERS A B, Carlander & Co, Halmstad". It has a tabulator, requiring the operator to be less attentive to carriage shifts, as the machine will always shift exactly one place, without the possibility of error.A second improvement is the quick clearing on the result register. Instead of having to turn the wingnut a full turn to clear the register, half a turn is all that is required, after which the spring-loaded wingnut snaps back to its original position.
The question remains whether "AVK" is the right type designation. The only other machines I have seen designated as AVKD's have two quick clearings, also on the revolution counter. Timo Leipälä pointed me to a 1912 book bij N.N. Pavlov (Calculations in technology and their aids) where this machine without fast clearing on the left is named AVK, so that seems to indicate that the "D" stands for fast clearing in the revolution counter - on the other hand, in one of 1914-1915 price lists available on the rechnerlexikon, there does not seem to be much rhyme or reason in specific letters pointing out specific features. The first letter always points to machine size and can be A (13) B (15) or C (18). But then the madness starts...
This is a literal translation of the information on the 1915 price sheet that can be found here: It is very odd that the model designations are in the latin alphabet ... there is no such thing as the letter "V", "N", "G" nor "D" in Cyrillic...
A-G : bell and comma ruler
A-HKD : bell, comma ruler and easy and silent *clearing of the result and counter registers, and brakes. (to prevent overrun ?)
A-HKMD: bell, comma ruler and easy and silent *clearing of the registers, but this time in an "improved/modified version"
A-VKD : bell, comma ruler, easy, silent, improved clearing + automatic carriage movement
A-GNT : bell, comma ruler and automatic "improved" carriage movement
I bought the machine from Sweden and had the most incredible difficulties to get it here. For some reason the shipping company I used was totally unable to find the address where the package should be picked up. I was literally staring at the front door of the place on google maps, but it took them over a week to get their act together and finally pick up the machine. Now it did get here, I am however quite happy with it!
