MECHANICAL OFFICE AIDS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19760, 10 April 1926, Page 19

MECHANICAL OFFICE AIDS.

ELECTRIC TYPEWRITERS. Super-typists performed amazing figure feats on electric typewriters at the business efficiency exhibition in the Central Hull. Westminster. reports the Daily Chronicle. As their fingers lightly touched the bars and levers of flu '' i typewriters factory wage sheets were turned out like lightning There was no counting. The electric control and hair-spring triggers did all that. Instead of a fatigued young typist having to strike keys and space bar over 40.000 times a day and return the paper carriage 850 times in seven hours for 50 letters, the electric machine did all the striking. It this exhibition is any criterion ot the future the next generation will see the clerical staffs of big businesses simply directors of machines. There were calculating machines which added, subtracted, divided, and almost used ’‘thinking" powers in their infinite calculations. Silent typewriters, machines. for sealing envelopes and stamping them at the rate of 250 a minute, and machines for postal franking, obviating the use of adhesive stamps, were oilier features. One of tile most fascinating machines was the coin counter and sorter, first made for the Bank of England The operator who demonstrated to a “Dnilv Chronicle" representative shot the silver load out on to a revolving leather band, and in a few seconds they were not merely stacked into denominations—from sixpences to half crowns —but they could be chocked at any point in the operation. Sorting can be done at the rate of £4OOO an hour, or over £1 a second. About 50.000 coins an hour can lip dealt with and put into packets automatically. Card indexes, which give immediate reference hv the simple method of pushing a needle into them, and machines which nost and balance ledgers are also to be seen.