Division of mechanical devices;

              Bulletin HASKINS & SELLS 25
Division of Mechanical Devices
Ledger Posting by Machinery
M A N Y of us have witnessed the broad-ening
of accounting methods during
the past twenty-five years. We have care­fully
studied and devised plans to meet the
requirements for the control and guidance
and safe conduct of big business. Twenty-five
years ago a million dollar corporation
was considered a big business. Today we
have corporations spending vast amounts
each year for office records.
The office appliance industry of today
has an interesting history in connection with
the growth of business and has done much
toward getting data without an amount of.
expense inconsistent with good manage­ment.
The investment in the industry is
probably more than one hundred million
dollars. With the present scarcity of cler­ical
help the mechanical devices are in
greater need than ever before. Who would
have thought, years ago, that bookkeeping
would ever be done by machinery? It is
now being done in many offices.
Probably the most advanced work applied
to machinery is ledger posting on adding
typewriters. There are several adding type­writers
and some adding listing machines
equipped to do ledger posting, but explana­tion
here will be made only of how the work
is done by the most advanced type of add­ing
typewriters in comparison with pen and
ink methods, and the results obtained.
It is easily seen that with a typewriter
one can head up a loose leaf ledger sheet
with name and address, post the date, folio
and amount, and write the descriptive mat­ter,
and if that were all that could be accom­plished
nothing perhaps but legibility would
be gained and that at a sacrifice of speed.
The typewriter itself, therefore, would not
induce a business man to do ledger posting
on a machine.
In the early development of the bookkeep-ing
machine, the typewriter was equipped
with two adding registers, so set as to add,
the debit and credit postings. The operator
could make a comparison at any time between
the amounts posted as shown in the adding
registers, with the pre-determined amount
of the posting medium. If the totals agreed
it was accepted as a mechanical proof that
all amounts were correctly posted. The
posting to the correct account is another
matter. With this equipment the mechan­ical
proof was gained without additional
time or effort. The adding registers were
set in their respective adding zones, that is,
over the money columns, and when posting
debits or credits the adding registers were
simultaneously engaged. This original
ledger posting method did not give one the
balances at the end of the month. The
work of balancing the individual accounts
was left to be done after completing the
month's business. The desire to relieve this
congestion and meet the business man's wish
to mail his statements on the first of the
month required further results. These re­sults
are now being obtained by mechan­ically
computing new balances at each post­ing.
These new balances are obtained by
additional effort and time. The machine is
equipped with two additional registers, mak­ing
four all told, and a cross-footer. Com­puting
a new balance requires the writing
of the old balance to which a debit or credit
posting is added or subtracted in the cross-footer.
When copying the new balance
from the cross-footer it automatically sub­tracts
the amount, and if correctly copied
the cross-footer is cleared. As a mechanical
"fool-proof" arrangement they have added
a key which can only be depressed when the
cross-footer is cleared. The key prints a
star which is treated as a symbol of audit.