The New International Encyclopædia/Pidgin, Charles Felton

PIDGIN, Charles Felton (1844—). An American writer, statistician, and inventor, born in Roxbury, Mass. He received an academic education, was in the mercantile business in Boston from 1863 to 1873, and in June of the latter year became chief clerk of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. Among many other machines and appliances for the mechanical tabulation of statistics, he invented an electrical adding and multiplying machine, an addition register, a self-counting tally sheet, and automatic multiple tabulating machine. He wrote the librettos for a number of musical comedies, and cantatas, and the words for more than sixty songs, and, in addition to many magazine articles, published: Practical Statistics; or the Statistician at Work (1888); and the novels, Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks (1900), and Blennerhasset, or the Decrees of Fate (1901).