During the American Civil War he enlisted in the Carlyle Home Guard, but only served for three months.

To create a model based on his ideas he hired William Seward Burroughs I to perform the work in his machine shop, which he, with his father, had in St.

When the calculating machine was finished, he sold one to the office of the Pennsylvania Railroad and was referred to George M. Taylor, Auditor of Freight Receipts.

[2] He placed both of his calculators on exhibition at the Franklin Institute, and he was awarded the John Scott Medal for the "most meritorious invention" of the year.

[2] Wilgott Theophil Odhner developed a similar pinwheel machine also based on Thomas' arithmometer and took out patents in all European countries and in the United States in 1878.

His machine, called Odhner's Arithmometer then appeared under ten to fifteen names in Europe, the most important being Brunsviga and Triumpator, which were manufactured in Germany.

[2] In 1900, he patented the "Baldwin Computing Engine", a machine by which multiplication or division was performed by one stroke for each digit.