Office Appliances

A third class of machine carries, below the typewriter key board, a io-key keyboard which controls the calculating mechan ism. Here the split-platen method is used for making ledger and statement at the same time. Still another class, used for ledger posting and instalment accounts, follows cash register design, amounts being set up on a push-in key-set keyboard and turned into the mechanism by the operation of the motor. There is a sliding printing table on which the forms to be posted are in serted. Two forms may be posted at the same time, the amount being printed on one and repeated on the other. This machine automatically computes and prints the amount of the balance outstanding on each account. Debits and credits are classified and a total of each is accumulated, as many as 18 individual and two group totals being obtainable. A detailed record of all postings is printed on a strip of paper inside the machine.

Billing Machines.

The writing of an invoice for goods sold, by means of a carbon duplication, can be made to serve other purposes also, and it is quite common at one writing to make the invoice, the original sales record, the shipping notice, the shipping record and other memoranda required for various kinds of business. By means of calculating devices, the amounts of the items may be computed and totals accumulated for controlling accounts. Combination typewriters designed to do this work are known as billing machines. These are designed to write, at one operation, the several necessary copies of orders, invoices, bills of lading and other forms and in some cases to compute amounts as they are written. Cut forms, printed and padded in individual sets so that each set is torn off and loose carbon inserted between the sheets to make the necessary copies, are used with some machines. Others use continuous-length forms, which provide multiple copies of the same or related forms, in rolls or folded flat, these forms being fed through the machine with the carbon interleaved between the copies, so that it is not necessary to insert new forms after writing each set.

Among the billers which write, but do not compute, is an ordinary correspondence typewriter equipped with an inbuilt carbon-changing device which removes the carbons from a set of continuous-length forms just written and inserts them in an other set. Another non-computing biller has a standard key board typewriter mounted on a carriage which moves from left to right across the flat writing surface over which the forms are fed. Cut forms may be used with this machine, and it may be equipped to add in vertical columns and to cross compute as well.

Book-keeping machines which combine a typewriter with a cal culating mechanism have been adapted to billing work which requires the adding or subtracting of amounts as they are typed. One such has an inbuilt carbon-changing device which provides for the use of continuous-length forms; another uses cut forms and may be equipped with a split cylinder so that billing and ledger posting can be done simultaneously.

Still another embodies a typewriter and a calculating mechan ism which handles addition, subtraction and multiplication, and is operated from a separate i o-key keyboard below the type writer keyboard. By means of a split-platen, billing and ledger posting can be done at the same time.

Accounting and Tabulating Machines.

The preparation of statistics requires, first, the sorting of data and, second, the accumulation, by classes, of the amounts involved. Machines for this work were first used by the U.S. Census Bureau, but are now being rapidly adapted to business uses, such as cost work, sales analysis and similar work.

Cards printed with vertical columns numbered from o to 9, or from o to 12, and separated into fields of one or more columns, each field representing an item, such as department, job number and so forth, form the basis of two systems. Facts are expressed in figures, letters or symbols, and are recorded by perforations on the card at the proper numerical positions, made by a punch ing machine which operates like a typewriter. The cards are then arranged by a sorting machine, according to a predetermined classification. Contact—electrical or mechanical, depending on the make of the machine—sets the mechanism in motion. The cards are next fed through the tabulating machine, which makes a printed final report, in multiple if so desired. Contact through the perforations causes the machine to designate and add what has been perforated into the cards—listings, sub-totals, totals or grand totals being obtained, depending upon the arrangement desired for the report.

Alphabetical Machines.

A recent improvement is a machine fitted to print a condensed alphabet by symbols as well as figures. This improvement makes it possible to perform automatically many operations, such as the writing of invoices of standard products, keeping stock records and the like. When detailed listing and printing is not required, a non-printing tabulator registers the quantities in counters which accumulate the totals, the figures being posted by hand to report forms. The 8o column card now available permits finer classification and enables a greater number of products or facts to be recorded.