The Bell Punch Company was a British company manufacturing a variety of business machines, most notably several generations of public transport ticket machines and the world's first desktop electronic calculator, the Sumlock ANITA.
History
The company was established in July 1878 in order to acquire the patent rights to an American hand-registering ticket punch that was being used by a number of British tramway companies. By 1884 they had begun development of their own range of ticket printing machines. In 1891 they began supplying ticketing machines for London General Omnibus Company. From then until its demise, Bell Punch had an unbroken history of supplying successive London bus companies, along with many other bus operators throughout the country.[1]
The first half of the twentieth century saw the company expand into different markets, including in cinema and theatre ticketing, horse race totalisator ticket machines, taximeters and mechanical calculators.[2]
In the Second World War the company developed and manufactured a variety of military equipment, including mechanical aircraft navigation computers and naval gunnery sighting and ranging devices.