IT'S ALL ADDING UP

EDWARD HELMORE

With Wall Street bonus season approaching again, it's hard to Wimagine a more satisfying way for a private-equity manager to calculate the magnitude of this year's wealth accumulation than by adding it all up on one of Andy Aaron's deliberately archaic adding machines. Conceptually residing between the abacus and the supercomputer, these machines are the product of Aaron's back-to-the-future type of obsession, a marriage of 70s-era calculator technology, L.E.D. displays, and old, old switches in still older wooden boxes. Some have a nautical vibe, some agricultural, others look like they might be magic contraptions—all are unique and ingenious. "They are about the juxtaposition of mutually exclusive ideas and the stimulation, humor, and beauty in that," explains Aaron. "People think they're seeing a 19th-century calculator—an impossible object. It's that jolt of recognition when they realize that what's going on is what I'm going for." At a time when lightning-fast calculation is taken for granted, Aaron's machines (available at aaronaddingmachines.com) offer deliberate purposefulness to everyday calculation. "They work," says Aaron. "You can put them on your desk and use them to add up your billion-dollar fund. They're not just a joke."