Price Computing Scales
In this website's Glossary of Terms, a "Computing Scale . . . indicates the price of the goods being weighed, at various rates per unit of weight." Other types of similar scales are "estimating" scales and "counting" scales, many of which are offsprings of the price computing scale, but they do not compute a price.
For our collection called "Price Computing Scales," we had to more clearly define which items to include:
- Price computing scales, or simply "computing scales," were designed for the retail grocery and hardware markets.
- Postal scales are their own collection and are not included here. There was some crossover with computing scales but nothing historically significant.
- In common language, the computing scale became an industry starting in 1891, with the formation of The Computing Scale Company of Dayton, Ohio (frequently referred to as "Dayton" scales). There were earlier inventions and local companies, but Dayton was the first to create a major market with a mass-produced computing scale.
- Included in our collection are pre-1891 scales that had a price-computing mechanism. Many times, it was a pricing chart in the form of a small cylinder that was part of a beam. However, these had significant limits: The price table may have handled only a pound or two, and the scale's capacity was only a few pounds.
History
Starting in the mid-1800s, old-line scale manufacturers like Fairbanks, Howe, and Avery made platform scales for grocers. They set on the merchant's countertop and had a capacity that could handle meat and sugar and potatoes. The challenge was how to get the load mechanism (platform) to connect to a pricing mechanism.
Other challenges were that a computing scale was (and still is) a precision instrument, and the scale had to be reasonably priced. Remember, this was for the grocery market, not a science laboratory, and in the late 1800s, the typical clerk wage was a dollar a week.
Suddenly, in 1891, Dayton was marketing a scale with a 100-pound (45 kg) capacity, a capacity that was ten times higher than other approaches to showing prices. And the price could be set at increments of a quarter-cent per pound. (See photo at top.)
Dayton used the 1885 patents by Julius Pitrat that went from Pitrat's company to the Detroit Computing Scale Co. to Dayton. Then, in 1895, Walter Stimpson1 developed a single-step method with a chart, accomplishing what took several steps with the Dayton scales.
The barrel scale and the fan-dial scale were the first of the "automatic" price computing scales—the clerk did not have to make any settings. In 1895, the Boston Computing Scale Company started making a hanging barrel scale (Dayton bought them out in 1899). And the fan-dial scale was the basis of the Toledo Scale Company that formed in 1901.2 However, the Toledo scales only went up to 10 pounds on the fan chart; so, added weight was done on a beam. Therefore, the barrel scale with its 30-pound (13.6 kg) capacity, though more difficult to make, had a clear advantage.
The ten years from 1895 until about 1905 was the boom period in the development and marketing of price computing scales. One outstanding feature of all of them was the ornate, artistic metalwork. (See Stimpson barrel scale photo at top.) The fancy metalwork disappeared as competition increased; so, the fancy metalwork quickly identifies a computing scale from the 1900 era.
It was not until after 1906 that the "honest weight" movement gained traction and Toledo picked up the slogan "No Springs, Honest Weight."
Finally, for dating these scales, white porcelain finishes did not start until about 1925. Some companies built new plants so they could coat with porcelain.
References:
1See Maker Histories > Stimpson Scale Companies
2Moss, Greg, “A Brief History of the Price Computing Scale,” Equilibrium, 2017, Issue No. 4, pp. 4431–4435.