Adding Machines for Total Dummies

Mechanical adding machine

We'd like to think that if a child were to ask us a question about how something works, we'd either lay out the process and function (in child-sized words, of course) or be confident enough to admit that we didn't know. That has not always been the case with eHow.com's contributors (as they called their freelance writers). Some googled the term and performed a half-baked copy-reword-paste job on some reference, but the worst of them simply chose to answer the question in the easiest way: pretend that the question was something else. That's how Margo Dill approached "How Does an Adding Machine Work?" at Sciencing.com.

We've seen Dill's method before, in particular when freelancers with liberal arts degrees (like Margo's) are called upon to describe how mechanical or electronic devices work. Like Tiesha Whatley before her, Dill chose to reinterpret the question as "How Do You Operate an Adding Machine?"; presumably because the mechanical answer was too... scienc-y. Weird: the site is, after all, "Sciencing," right?

In truth, modern adding machines are little more than oversize calculators whose operation is controlled by simple programmed microprocessors. When it comes to the old-timey adding machines that your grandparents and great-grandparents pounded on in the bank or insurance office, their operation is entirely mechanical. We won't go into the details, but we did know enough to find a useful online reference to how they work.

Dill, however, did little more than pound out some verbiage that made it pretty clear that she was not only clueless about mechanical adding machines, but about adding machines in general. Take, for instance, this pronouncement:

"Adding machines work on a binary system similar to computers and were created mainly for an accounting environment."

Like hell they do! Or maybe this bit of bogosity:

"...if you have an old adding machine and you use it like you would a calculator, your adding machine may not work correctly for you and you will not receive totals that make sense. "

We don't even know how you would use an old adding machine "like you would a calculator"; you? And last but not least, there's this utter bullshit:

"When you want to complete a problem on an adding machine, such as '7 - 3,' you would not key in '7,' then the subtraction sign, then '3' and then an equal sign. If you do, then you will get an answer of '-4,' and you know that is not the correct answer. Again, you have to think like an accountant when you are working with your adding machine. To figure this subtraction problem on an adding machine, you would need to key in '7,' the addition sign, '3' and then the subtraction sign; you would get the answer of 4. You are actually working the problem as '7 + (-3).' This would be true on most modern day machines. In order to subtract, you have to add the negative number."

Wait, what? Where did this idiot come up with that bit of stupidity ? It's all related to Margo's bizarre statement, earlier in the post, that.

"Accountants and business owners are not concerned as much with addition and subtraction as they are with positive and negative numbers."

We don't know where our Dumbass of the Day came up with that notion, but we do know one thing: Dill didn't answer the question, managing instead to contribute a huge dollop of stupidification to the internet. Sheesh.

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