On November 1, 1881 Edwin Thacher, a graduate of Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute, was awarded U.S. Patent #249,117 for an improvement in slide rule technology. Thacher worked as an engineer for the Keystone Bridge Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he designed railway bridges. To assist in his calculations, he designed a cylindrical slide rule that had distinct advantages over a conventional slide rule, most notably a much higher degree of accuracy.

Thacher's Calculating Instrument can be thought of as a series of conventional slide rules mounted around the periphery of a cylinder. There are 20 pairs of scales forming the outer framework of the cylinder. Within this framework there is a solid cylinder that can be both rotated and moved longitudinally within the framework of scales. The open framework itself can also be rotated as a unit. Thacher's Calculating Instrument was mounted on a mahogany base and produced by the Keuffel and Esser Company of New York.

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