Peerless ... what, in fact ? s/n 6972
This is a bit of a mystery, probably in the aftermath of the “upheaval in the Schwarzwald” where many calculator manufacturers starte merging and cooperating, while not necessarily wanting the outside world to know. One of such was Peerless, a brand name for the firm by Mathias Bäuerle, reserved for their slider machines, and the corresponding Badenia, which were the machines with keyboards. There was a cooperation with the Austria firm from Samuel Herzstark, in Vienna.
Quite late in the life of the Peerless Baby (the little version of the Peerless, with more compact setting register and smaller capacity - see here), some adaptations were apparently made. There is now a “Rheinmetall or Archimedes-style” three-prong star at the front of the machine, which allows to shift the carriage left or right without manually lifting it. This also required a number of adaptations to the carriage.
Also the handle has moved from the top plate of the machine, where it connected through a bevel gear to the shaft in front, to a handle sticking out the side of the machine, which connects through a normal straight cut set of gears to the front shaft that operates the Leibniz cylinders.
This is the “old” Baby:
Only this machine appears to be known according to this pattern. It no longer says “Baby” on the top plate either - possibly because any other (non-baby) Peerless machines had been discontinued by then.
There is an image in the Kantoormachinegids from January 1938, where a similar model is called the “Peerless Baby Z” - I have no idea what the Z stands for, but apart from having the side-facing crank, and the star-shaped carriage shift (which also features on other Badenia machines without the slide carriage, from about s/n 7500 on), there is another button of unclear purpose up on the top plate, the +/- selector seems smaller and in a different place, and most importantly the capacity is even smaller, at 7 x 6 x 10. So is this a larger Peerless baby Z ...or ?
In any case, this machine, with its green top plate, seems to fall right into the correct serial number range for being beginning of the 1930s, and is possibly one of the very latest Baby Peerless machines, sold by a company that was hopelessly trying to innovate, cooperate, and at the same time make every sale they could. The tide would only really turn after world war II with the new T series.
Hermann Haas does not show up in the Berlin phone directory in 1932 or 1934, but he does show up with this address and phone number in the 1936 edition.
In 1937 automatic dialing was introduced in Berlin, and the number for B2 Lützow changed to 22 ... so I reckon this machine was sold in 1935 or 1936 - and made a bit earlier - it may have been sitting for a while before finding an owner.
Now finally - some pictures.
The process of moving the carriage:
...and finally the two Baby-sisters side by side:
