MECHANICAL ACCOUNTING

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 196, 16 May 1936, Page 7

MECHANICAL ACCOUNTING

An Essential of Modern Book-keeping In an address on the modern developmeiit of mechanised counting at a recent demonstration of accounting machines before a combined meeting of members of the Wellington Accountant Students’ Society and the Wellington branch of the New Zealand Society of Accountants. Mr. L. A. Wallace at I rib tiled the rapid developments made in the accounting machines during the last. few years to the complexity of modern business and the necessity for up-to-thc-mintite figure information. The everincreasing net’ll of modern industry, the growing necessity for accurate costing, prompt returns properly analysed, and a daily statement of the figure facts of business had been clearly visualised mid carefully studied bv engineers and iiccoinitaiHs during the last half century. Nowadays mechanical accounting was a definite part id' Hie accountant's training. Any man who neglected to study this subject was doing himself an injury which would sadly handicap him in his aceouulatic.v career. Will) mechanical equipment large concerns naturally attracted attention to the requirements of (lie small business. loday a complete book-keeping machine had been produced which was a quarter of the cost of the larger machine, and yet wouil do the complete figure work of a business, such as to post ledgers, make out statements, do all kinds of analyses, post private ledger, ami provide a daily distribution journal of tlie main ligules of the business. When the first typewriter was invented, in about 4.879, tlie inventor had in multi using it. only an a numbering machine. When it was pointed out that letters ns well as figures could be written in tlie same way, no practical use would be found lor it at the time. In 1874 the first typewriter was sold for writing a letter. The first adding.machine was put on the market in 4888. To-day there are only a combination of these two machines used for book-keeping, but they were doing such wonderful things as adding in any one of 20 columns either vertically or horizontall,V. Thev were automatically adding and subtracting without any thought oil the part of the operator. The carriage of tile machine opened and closed automatically and moved from one column to tlie oilier, skipping those columns in which there were no figures to be printed. In fact, automatic operations of tlie modern book keeping machine made it necessary lor the operator to do a very small part of Ihe completed job. Calculating machines were uncanny m their operation. Au operator set up some difficult calculation on tlie keyboard, pressed tlie button, and went on with some other work while the mechanism was tui'iinig over tlie figures internally until the desired result was shown on the keyboard. L'he duplex electric calculator made individual calculations of stock sheets and at the same time stored up the whole of the calculations so that when I he work of the page or section was complete, the grand total was available. The inevitable introduction of accounting machines was widening rather than narrowing tlie scope of accountants, who were relieved from routine drudgery, and thus had more time and energy available for operations on a higher plane for the guidance of business, concluded MiWallace.