Born of Passion: Calculating Machines from the Walter Szrek Collection

Before the pocket calculator there were arithmometers, abacuses and slide rules, and Walter Szrek collected so many that the Jagiellonian University counts his gift among the largest collections of its kind in the world. Collegium Maius has shown a selection since 13 June 2025. No closing date has been announced, and the only way in is a guided tour on weekdays at 12:00.

Jagiellonian University Museum Collegium Maius on the exhibition (the museum’s own English text):

In 2025, one of the world’s largest collections of calculating machines will be added to the museum. This collection was created and amassed by Walter Szrek (1951-2024), a Polish computer scientist, collector, and developer of lottery systems used worldwide.

Collecting had been a part of his life since his youth, though the objects of his interest evolved over time. As a student at the Warsaw University of Technology, he began collecting Polish posters. After moving permanently to the United States, his passion shifted to Michelin lamps and bottle openers. However, his most significant collection was born during a visit to the Koło flea market in Warsaw. In 2000, he purchased an Odhner arithmometer from 1907. Over time, the collection grew to include more than 700 instruments, along with numerous books, leaflets, manuals, and other materials related to the history of calculating machines.

What to expect

Irena and Walter Szrek gave the university more than 500 historical mathematical instruments in June 2024, so the museum quotes two figures: over 700 instruments in the collector’s whole collection and over 500 in the gift. Szrek died a few days after making sure the collection would go to Krakow. His wife and daughters attended the opening on 13 June 2025 in his place.

The museum does not say how many objects are on display or in which room. In spring 2025 it put the first pieces in the Libraria, the old university library, and announced a preview of part of the collection for Museum Night on 16 May 2025. According to the Krakow daily Gazeta Krakowska, this is the first time the collection has been shown in public, and Joanna Ślaga of the museum said the exhibition would be a long-term one. That explains the missing end date.

Objects named by the museum and the press:

• Odhner arithmometer, serial number 21 - the oldest surviving “Odhner” in the world, according to the museum. The curator, Dr Maciej Kluza, told the Polish Press Agency it is one of the first machines from the St Petersburg factory’s series production.
• Models of Słonimski’s multiplying machine - listed by Gazeta Krakowska, alongside ordinary abacuses.
• Prototypes, patent models and variants that never went into production - the museum says these dominate the collection, together with low serial numbers.
• Cipher tools, circular slide rules and adders - the Polish Press Agency lists them as part of the collection; which of them are on display at any given time is not stated.

The museum also recommends a Polish Radio podcast in which Dr Kluza talks about the exhibition - the recording on the museum’s website (in Polish). It is the best preparation available, because the museum’s own page says very little about the show itself.

Context

The Odhner arithmometer was invented in 1873 by Willgodt Odhner, a Swede working in Russia, who replaced Leibniz’s heavy stepped drum with a light pinwheel. Series production began in his St Petersburg workshop in 1890, and clones followed all over the world, from the German Brunsviga to the Soviet Felix. Machines of this type stayed in use until electronic calculators arrived in the early 1970s.

Chaim Zelig Słonimski, a scholar and the publisher of the Hebrew-language journal Ha-Tsefirah, built an adding and subtracting machine in 1839 and won a prize from the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg for an improved calculating machine. Dr Kluza has been here before: he co-authored an earlier Jagiellonian University Museum exhibition of calculating machines, “Machinae Calculatoriae”, held for the centenary of the Polish Mathematical Society.

Tickets and time

You can see the exhibition only on a guided tour, Monday to Friday at 12:00 (noon). That is what the museum’s visiting page says in September 2026; there are no tours of the show at weekends. The museum warns that university ceremonies change its hours and routes; around the inauguration of the academic year, at the turn of September and October, the museum or its main exhibition tends to close for a few days. Check the “Z ostatniej chwili” (latest news) box on the visiting page before you set out.

The museum does not publish a price for the exhibition tour, and the online shop has no separate ticket for it. The price list has two tickets: guided 26 PLN (reduced 14 PLN) and self-guided 17 PLN (reduced 10 PLN). That the tour costs the same as the guided ticket is our reading; to be sure, email collegiummaius.info@uj.edu.pl or call +48 12 663 15 21.

All three routes through the main exhibition include the Libraria, the self-guided 17 PLN route among them. If part of the collection is still in the Libraria, you will see it on the cheapest ticket, but the museum does not confirm this, so treat it as our reading, not a promise.

Do not count on a free Wednesday for this show. In June 2025 the museum opened it free of charge and without a guide on Wednesdays, but the current visiting page does not repeat that. Today the free Wednesday applies to the self-guided route, 13:30-17:00, which starts after the 12:00 tour.

The museum does not say how long the exhibition tour lasts; allow an hour. The 9:45 guided tour of the main exhibition runs in English and takes about 45 minutes, so you can combine the two in one morning, with time for coffee in the courtyard café in between.

English on site: the museum publishes an English page about the collection and lists the tour on its English visiting page, but it does not state the language of the 12:00 tour or of the labels. Ask when you book.

Best for programmers, engineers, accountants with a soft spot for old offices, and anyone curious about how people calculated before electronics. Skip it if you can only come at a weekend, or if what you are really after is the Jagiellonian Globe, which is on a different route.

Events

• 25 September 2026, 15:00-17:00 - “Born of Passion” at the Małopolska Researchers’ Night: the story of the Szrek gift presented in 20-minute sessions (15:00, 15:20, 15:40, 16:00, 16:20, 16:40), for all ages, registration: Researchers’ Night booking page (in Polish).

What the press says

Gazeta Krakowska (13 Jun 2025, Anna Piątkowska): the report from opening day traces the road from the abacus to the smartphone and stresses that this is the first public showing of the Szrek collection - link (republished on krakow.naszemiasto.pl; Polish-language source).

dzieje.pl / PAP (15 Jun 2025, Polish Press Agency): the opening wire; the curator singles out arithmometer no. 21 as the gem of the collection, and Irena Szrek says her husband wanted the collection kept together - link (Polish-language source).

Radio Kraków (15 Jun 2025, edited by Jowita Gałka-Kucharska): the same PAP wire with a PAP photo gallery - link (Polish-language source).

Three pieces, all news reports from the opening days; none of the sources read is a review.

See also

• Precious, Most Precious. Works from the Princes Czartoryski Library - about ten minutes’ walk away, until 25 October; another collection built by collectors, with a first edition of Copernicus.
• Art and Trade. Krakow of Craftsmen - the workshops and masterpieces of Krakow’s old guilds at the Krzysztofory Palace, until 25 October; precision of the hand rather than of the mechanism.
• Polish Design: Object Biographies / Designer Biographies - Bunkier Sztuki, until 13 December; everyday objects and their stories, this time contemporary ones.

Tickets, opening hours, and current details are on the Collegium Maius visiting page .

Museum profile: Jagiellonian University Museum Collegium Maius .