Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 September 1901 — BOOKKEEPING MACHINE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BOOKKEEPING MACHINE.

The bookkeeper is on the toboggan slide. The advance in labor-saving machinery has finally reachedt his sphere ahd warned him that he must seek other occupation. The latest piece of mechanism to invade the larger cities consists of machines which dispense with bookkeepers in large establishments and perform their labor through the medium of an operator and a typewriter. One of the machines in an ordinary establishment does away with the labor of two men; another dispensing with the labor of eight men. The first machine, under the direction of an ordinary typewritist, makes out a bill, copies the invoice permanently in a book, and makes a permanent sales sheet copy. The Work is all done in typewriting and in permanent books. The second machine makes a sales copy, an original, a duplicate and a triplicate bill of lading, a platform order, a factory shipping order, a bag-room order, a loading order and a car card. Still a third machine, of which Marshall Field has taken thirty, makes one bill a month adding the items day by day, recording the date and salesman’s number by a lock arrangement which makes it impossible for the operator to enter a series of items without dating the same and entering the salesman's number, enters all credits In red ink, and carries 1,200 accounts at one time. A Tennessee bank cashier is responsible for the invention of these ma-

chines. His name is Fisher, and he lives at Athens. Sjome years ago, looking through a postoffice window, he noted a clerk cancelling stamps with a hand stamp. He wondered why the same work could not be done by machinery. From that point his thoughts

wandered on to the wonder why his own books could not be kept by machinery. He tried to make a bookkeeping machine. A year ago he produced three machines, which are now supplanting bookkeepers in large establishments.

A BOOKKEEPING TYPEWRITER.