Sumlock
Ian
One of these then
I never used one of these myself having been "raised" on more conventional adding machines (and I have a good turn of speed as long as I don't think about the numbers or look at the keys) but was shown their operation by members of staff who used to use them - these were in the bakeries I worked in from 1981 to 1989.
In the first bakery there were a couple of them, they were on small trolleys almost the exact size of the machine which could be pulled over beside the desk when needed. In the second bakery there was just the one which was only very seldom used.
In both bakeries these (and quite a few more) machines where used to do the tabulations for the daily baking requirements although they had been replaced in the mid 1970s by computers - (both ICL 2903) which, although hugely expensive at the time, resulted in considerable cost savings in terms of staff and improved information flow - we are not talking PCs here but machines that filled entire air-conditioned rooms, although a modern PC would have for more processing power than they did. It is not widely known that a bakery chain (J Lyons, as in Lyons Corner Houses and "nippies") was one of the major pioneers in the application of computerised information systems in the immediate post WW2 period.
A word about the "doubling up" you mention. From the picture above one can see that each register (units, 10s, 100s, 1000s etc) goes from 1 - 9. However, as a time saving technique it was possible for the hand never to go above 5 - if one wanted to enter the number 7 for example rather than move physically move the hand up to the number 7 the same result could be achieved by pressing the numbers 4 and 3 sequentially, for 8 it would be 4 and again 4 - this technique could be applied was across all the registers - although it might sound complicated, it proved to be second nature to those trained in its use.
I once saw a small "portable" comp. (these were by no means light weight) which only had keys for each register from 1 - 5 - it was only when doubling up was explained to me that I understood how this worked.
I am the first to acknowledge the power and cost effectiveness of modern PC accounting based systems but I do feel some sadness as the passing of some earlier technologies and the skilled people who used them.
Al
