married his wife, Ida (née Selover) in 1879. They had two sons and two daughters: Jennie, Horace, Mortimer (father of William S. Burroughs II), and Helen.

Inventor

In 1875, he started working as a bank clerk. Much of his job consisted of laboriously reviewing ledgers for errors. Burroughs then became interested in developing an adding machine. At the bank, there had been a number of prototypes, but in inexperienced hands, they would sometimes give incorrect answers. Burroughs' did

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