Office Appliances (Continued)

 

1.	Communication machines   The telephone, Communication machines form the next group of office machines. First and foremost among these is the telephone, which is the principal means of communication between the office, the factory, and the world outside. As a general rule, it is better to have too many than too few telephones. The outside dealings of an office cannot be properly subdivided and efficiently handled unless there is a sufficient number of telephones in the office. The switchboard operator can save a great deal of time and confusion by properly directing the traffic of inward calls and calling outside persons. If the switchboard does not occupy the operator's entire time, some supplementary routine task can be assigned to her. The important matter of telephone courtesy should be emphasized when the operator is trained for her work.
2.	House Telephones.   Where there is a switch board operator it is possible to use the outside telephone installation for purposes of communication between persons in the office. An objection to this practice is that it often delays outside business. Another objection is on account of the delay in making the connection by the switchboard operator. The automatic or house telephone system is designed to remedy these defects. In the case of the automatic telephone system each extension can make connection with any other telephone on the line which is wholly independent of the public telephone. The connection is instantaneous. Maintenance requires little time, and the salaries of switchboard operators are saved. By use of the telephone for office communications, employes can "talk instead of walk," and thus savetime.
3.	Executives' telephones.   Frequently an executive, unless protected from interruption by telephone, would be prevented from doing concentrated work or from holding conferences. The switchboard operator is usually too busy to afford him such protection. It is the duty of his private secretary to receive his calls, handle all business that is of a routine nature, and arrange for the postponement of even important calls when the executive must not be disturbed.
4.	The telautograph   The telautograph is an instrument which transmits handwriting electrically by wire. The message is written by means of a pen on an automatic shift pen roll which guides other penjs, electrically, at each receiving station. Persons writing on the telautograph can communicate a message in the same handwriting to any connected receiving station in the same building or even many miles away.   The telautograph, which is an expensive installation, was first used by hotels for communication be tween the desk and the floor maids. The system is now used in banks and department stores to obtain credit information without having to ask aloud for it in the presence of the person investigated. It can be used by the office boy to announce callers to executives. It can be used for many forms of intercommunication in the office where a written message is preferable to a spoken one. Verbal instructions over the telephone may be misunderstood or forgotten unless jotted down at the time. A telautogi'aph order is unmistakable there are identical records of it at two places.
5.	The dictagraph.   A highly perfected means of intercommunication between office departments is the dictagraph. At first it was used chiefly for the detection of crime. It is now a recognized office appliance. The dictagraph consists of a receiving instrument in the chief executive's office, connected by wire with the corresponding instruments in other parts of the building. The executive at his desk can make connections with any of the receiving stations, issue orders to the men in those rooms and even overhear their conversation. Letters can be dictated to a stenographer in another room. E. F. Hare, president of the Packard Motor Car Company of Xew York, thus describes the use of the dictagraph One of a busy executive's greatest losses of time is thru personalities. Most of the people who speak to the president spend four minutes in "mouth talk" to every two minutes of "brain talk."   High executives don't see half the men they really want to see because they cannot hold them down to the business at hand.   With my , I can press a key, ask a department head a question, get my answer, say "thank you" and use the information for answering my telephone, while writing a letter or making a decision, in less time than the usual courtesies of a usual interview.   I lift no receiver, and do not even change my position at the desk. Our whole organization is connected, the system affording completeness of communication.   We don't put off so many things now that we have the system. We don't hold up something for a department head until enough has accumulated to make calling him worth while. We "do it now."   The system practically seats every other executive in the office at one's elbow, yet far enough apart that each can do his particular work best.   The disadvantages of the system, on the other hand, are found in the fact that the wiring and machinery are usually sensitive and easily get out of order. That is. particularly true in an office where there are many office boys. The system, being novel, offers much amusement and opportunity for practice on it after office hours and during the luncheon hour, and the system cannot well stand such abuse.
6.	Mechanical messenger boys   Finally, we have mechanical messenger boys   There are two forms the pneumatic tube and the overhead carrier, both familiar from their use in retail stores. In either case there is a central desk to which the pneumatic cylinder or the overhead basket carrier is sent and thence distributed to destination. The small pneumatic cylinders are suitable for carrying messages, sales slips, cash, etc. In the basket carriers, light articles, such as files, can be transmitted. The overhead carriers can do the distributing and collecting for a central filing department, if the entire office is on one floor.
7.	Mathematical machines.   Mathematical machines make up the next group. They are designed primarily to do the arithmetical tasks which formerly proved so burdensome to the clerks. To the latter these machines are what the rock drill is to the subway laborer, or the compressed air riveter to the structural steel worker.
8.	Adding machines   The most largely used and best known of the mathematical machines is the adding machine. Compared with the human brain it has the double advantage of greater speed and greater accuracy. There are two types of adding machines the listing and the non-listing types. The listing machine writes down each item which goes to form the total that is calculated. The non-listing machine does not write down the individual items, but merely performs the calculation desired and gives the total, which is sufficient for the purpose of verifying a mathematical calculation already made. The listing machine is more expensive and its operation is, necessarily, somewhat slower. An analj^sis of the requirements of the business will show which of these types of machines is the more suitable. Subtraction, multiplication and division can also be performed upon the adding machine, but in larger offices these operations are usually left to the calculating machine.

	In one firm an adding machine is employed to do the following pieces of work   Adding trial balances Balancing accounts Adding voucher check books Adding daily sales Adding and balancing daily sales analyses Adding cash Extending and proving biUs Figuring inventories Totaling cost sheets Extending, adding and proving pay rolls
	In addition, the machine distributes the pay-roll by departments to   Total day working hours Piece work Overtime earnings and allowances Percentage of piece work hours Average weekly wage per hour Average piece work hour wage Average wage by departments.
9.	Calculating machines.   On the specific calculating machines, addition is less rapidly performed than on the adding machines, but subtraction, multiplication and division are much more rapid. These operations are performed with integral numbers, fractions or decimals. Square root and cube root also are extracted. All work is visible, and unless the operator is careless, mistakes are impossible. If he is careless.   The machine reports his error. These calculating machines can be used in a great variety of ways to figure percentages and ratios, and in working out a whole mass of statistics now used for managerial control. Such a machine does wonders in banking houses where at the end of the day twenty checks may be credited to a person, and fifteen more debited, the subtraction made and the balance given all mechanically perfect and infallible.   When one considers the present use of adding and calculating machines, it is difficult to understand how the monthh  statements for customers could be prepared by unaided human addition and subtraction. Under such circumstances the present volume of banking business could not be handled without at the same time tripling the clerical force
10.	Billing and bookkeeping machines.   A combination of the typewriter and calculating machine is the so called billing machine, or bookkeeping machine. In its ordinary form it is a typewriter with the keys located at the top of the machine instead of at the bottom. They strike upon paper that is laid flat. The writing is at all times visible. In addition to the typewriting feature they have an adding and subtracting register which can be supplied to any column of figures listed. These billing machines are invaluable for retail stores with a large number of charge accounts that sometimes run into fifty items and contain credit items for "goods returned."
11.	Loose leaf or card bookkeeping   With the use of cards or loose leaves for accounting records, the use of bookkeeping machines has been extended to the keeping of individual ledger accounts. In view of the fact that by means of these machines a number of carbon copies can be made of each record, they are especially useful where such duplicates are required. It is possible to take a page of a ledger, insert it in a machine, make the proper entries, replace it in the ledger all in less time than was required to make these entries in pen and ink. However, the main  value of the system lies in the automatic proof which it affords and in the elimination of duplicate operations, as in the making out of invoices and accounts. Any number of copies can, of course be made. As for neatness and legibility, even the best handwriting is much inferior to the product of the typewriter. H. J. Loughran, Comptroller of the National Surety Company of New York, has described the advantage of mechanical bookkeeping in one of the issues of the magazine 100 %       We use electrically driven bookkeeping madiines, combining the adding and typing features, which give us a loose-leaf original register of the business written, arranged by policy expiration dates, with total figures for the computation of pro rata premium reserve in one original book of entry.   In addition to this register, we create at the same writing, bj means of carbon paper, our underwriter's index of each page on a four by six card ; our expiration record on a similar card, and a Hollerith tabulating machine card on the reverse side of which is typed in this operation a description of the bond policy.   This work was formerly done in two operations, in addition to which the work of computing the reserve was done by a force of men on standard adding machines by process of selection of policy expiration dates. Combining this work as we have, we have saved in pay-roll, seven typists and three reserve clerks.   We have obtained an original book of entry, arranged numerically by policy numbers of which we have felt the need for several years. We give identical copies of all records to all departments interested in the risk, and thusdo away with the errors occasioned by recopying the different forms
12.	Cash register.   The cash register can also be used for office purposes; for example, to give the bank balance to date. The register can print upon each deposit slip the total amount of the deposit. It can also print, upon each check, the amount of the check drawn. Adding counters on the register can add the total of deposits during the day to the bank balance of the day before. Then, from this total, the day's bank balance can be determined by subtracting  the total of the day's checks.   In the same way, the cash register can keep track of bills paid, sales, money paid on account and petty cash expenditures. The totals of these items can be continually registered and kept so that the status of any feature of the business can be readily ascertained.   The business of a certain publishing house is largely conducted on an instalment basis. To facilitate handling the accounts, each is given a number. When checks or remittances of any sort come in, they are usually accompanied by a letter from the customer.   If the letter does not give the customer's number, a file is consulted and the number marked. Each payment is then rung up on the letter received from the customer, the cash register giving the amount of the remittance, the date received and the number of the account. A carbon of this information is recorded on a roll which remains in the register.   The customer's letter is forwarded to the proper department for handling and the carbon on the roll goes to the Accounting Department for credit to the customer's account. The carbon is then pasted in a cash book for permanent record.     In addition to the above, the register gives a daily and monthly total of the money received. The daily total is used to check up the deposits, while the monthly total is used to check up the accounting books. The monthly total is consulted also for quick reference to the business done.   The register in this case was specially constructed to meet the requirements of that office. It pays to study the needs of your business and build a register to fit those needs.
13.	Statistical machines   The most remarkable of all appliances in the mathematical group are the socalled statistical machines. The first made was intended for use in the census department at Wasliington, and the tabulation and calculation of census results would now be impossible without it. The machine has three parts which operate upon specially designed cards. One machine, operated in a manner similar to a typewriter, punches the cards in designed squares. Each square has a particular significance a punch in one may mean a salesman, a state, or a sum of money. For each sale such a card is punched. The punched cards are assembled and taken to the sorting machine. By an electrically controlled sorter all the cards of salesman "A" will be picked out, the sorter choosing only those which are punched in "A's" square. The cards thus chosen are then taken to the calculator an adding device which will give the total of "A's" sales. In making its addition, the machine is guided by the punches which represent the sum on each card. When the analysis of sales for each salesman has been completed, all the cards can again be run thru the machine, and this time sorted and totaled to indicate the month's sales by states, or by grades of product. Montgomery, Ward and Company use such a machine to make analyses of their sales in four • different directions

	1)	Territorially, or by states.
	2)	By departments, or kinds of goods.
	3)	By methods of shipment, express, freight or parcel post.
	4)	By method of order whether thru the catalog or otherwise.

	The possibilities of analysis to which these cards lend themselves are illustrated by the use which the census department makes of them, ascertaining the number and geographical distribution of the inhabitants, their classification according to color, race, nativity, parentage, age, marital condition and in addition furnishing statistics which are subdivisions of these headings.   Some firms now make a specialty of offering the services of statistical machines for customers who have occasional use for them. Concerns which could not well afford to own these machines may hire work done on them by the service concerns.
14.	Semi-mathematical machines.   There is another group of machines closely related to the mathematical group, and not deserving separate classification. There is for example, a small hand stamp for the consecutive numbering of requisitions, orderblanks, etc. There is also a check protector which macerates the figures of a check in the paper, at the same time letting colored ink into the maceration, making it almost impossible to change the figures without detection. A less desirable machine is one which stamps, for example, "Not over $500." Here leeway is left for the falsifier.   An ingenious machine is the check signer, by means of which ten checks may be signed by one person at the same time. The machine works on the principle of the telautograph, already described. When the ten checks have been signed, they are dropped into trays, and ten other checks are slid under the pens. It is said that by the use of such a machine a person may sign his name twenty thousand times in a day.  The machine is of particular use to high corporate officials upon such occasions as the issuance of thousands of new securities which, under the law, must be signed by a specified person.
15.	Mailing machines   The addressing machines. A number of machines can be listed in the mail group, because they have to do with the preparation or opening of the mail. The most important machine in this group is the addressing machine. Its purpose is to prepare permanent lists of addresses, carried either on stencil cards or type plates. These type plates or stencils are filed in receptacles exactly as index cards are. Out of the cabinet holding these addresses, the plates or stencils are automatically let into the machines by which envelops, post cards, bills, etc., are addressed in rapid order. When the envelops have been printed, the address plates drop back into the cabinet drawer, so that the original order of the arrangement is maintained. Such address-lists can be used by mail order houses, newspapers, banks, collection departments, sales departments for lists of prospects, and in general by any organization or department having a great number of persons with whom it must periodically communicate. It enables any boy or girl, in a few hours' time, to do the work that used to require days and weeks of clerks' time. It enables anybody to fill in letters, address envelops and circular letters, head up and date statements, imprint pay forms, shipping tags, labels and the like at the rate of one thousand to three thousand per hour, which is ten to thirty times faster than the pen or typewriter.  There is no possibihty of error or omission. Where it is worth while to employ the addressing machine, it is generally worth while to attach to it a motor which operates it electrically.
16.	Letter openers.   Where there is a large volume of mail to be opened, a letter opener is indispensable. Even when it does not result in any great money saving, it does save time and gets the mail opened for prompt distribution. The knife can be so adjusted as to cut only one hundredth of an inch from the top of the envelop. In the larger power machines the envelops, regardless of size, can be set in the machine, carried between two rollers and opened with great speed.
17.	Time stamp.   In connection with an envelop opener, a dating machine or stamp can be used to indicate, upon the mail opened, the day and the hour of the day when it was taken out of the envelop. The use of the time stamp is of course not confined to the dating or the opening of mail. Time stamps can be used thruout the office for indicating the time at which bills were paid, records were filed, or the time at which work passed from one department to the other. This latter use of the time stamp is valuable in following up the passage of work thru the office routine, and in checking any inefficiency of movement.   Date perforators will stamp from half a dozen letters to half a hundred at a time, depending upon thesize of the machine used. They can be adjusted to stamp at any one of four periods during the day  that is, these perforators do not mark the hour of the day,  but after perforating the date, the perforation of an extra dot signifies the letter was received the first part of the morning, two dots, the latter part of the morning, and so on.
18.	Letter folding   Where a firm sends out a thousand letters a day, it may pay to have a folding machine to fold the letters for insertion in the envelop. Such machines, which can fold a piece of paper one, two or three times, are also suitable for folding circulars, usually received from the printer in flat form. The machine is electrically driven. Of course, its use results in accuracy and neatness not easily attainable by hand folding. The main use of this folder is for form letters; the main objection to its use is that when there are two sheets to a letter each one is folded separately.
19.	Envelop sealer and stamper.   Where the volume of daily mail is heavy, it is difficult to get along without an envelop sealing and stamping machine. The machine is operated electrically, moistening the gum and sealing the envelops. Stamps are affixed automatically. The machine does its work rapidly and neatly. The number of envelops sealed and the number of stamps used are indicated on a register.   There are also separate stamping machines. Stamps purchased from the post office in rolls of one thousand each are locked into the stamp box and can not be extracted except as they are pasted on letters and registered. In this manner petty thieving of postage stamps is stopped.
20.	Envelop feeders.   There is an envelop feeding machine which feeds envelops into typewriters. It is of value only when the volume of envelops addressed by one typewriter is very large or the supply constant.
21.	Time clocks.   There is also a small group of machines or appliances not so readily classified, among them the time clock which is used in most factories and in some offices as well. The device consists of a clock with a time stamp, located between two racks. The rack at the left indicates those who are in the office; that on the right, those who are out. In each rack is a place for the card of each employe. When he enters in the morning he takes his card from the right hand rack, stamps it and places it in the lefthand rack. When he goes out, he similarly stamps his card as he transfers it from the left to the righthand rack. Those who are late have the time indicated in red on their cards. Each individual thus supplies his own attendance record.   Time clocks, however, are not generally used in offices because the concentrated office force may be more readily supervised than the dispersed employes of factories or such places of employment as shipyards. Office employes are moreover likely to be of a class that resents this mechanical recording of their coming and going. And it is true that between them and their superiors there should exist a relationship that would produce the same degree of punctuality as that which the time clock enforces.   In offices employing one hundred people or more it has been found practical to employ some mechanical method of checking arrivals and departures. One time clock has a dial on which are numbers which correspond to the numbers assigned employes. A lever marked "in" and "out" is used for punching the number whenever the employe passes in or out. The records are marked with the employe's number and the time punched "in" or "out." In this way, any system of disciplining those who are habitually late is easily established.
22.	Minor appliances.   It may seem unnecessary to mention such well known devices as paper fasteners and pencil sharpeners. It is worth while, however, to point out the importance of having a sufficient number of pencil sharpeners handy, or of having an office boy charged with the duty of seeing that each employe is supplied with a sufficient number of sharpened pencils to meet his or her requirements.
23.	The paper cutting machine   A paper cutting machine is profitably used in many large offices. Ordinarily the cutting charge for 500 sheets is ten cents. Since much of the paper used in the office can be cut on this machine, considerable saving is thereby effected. Usually a ream of paper may be cut at a Time depending, of course, upon the weight of the paper.
24.	The padding machine.   In every office there is a certain quantity of discarded paper which can be used as scratch pads if put up in convenient form. The most economical way of doing this is to use a padding machine. After the paper is sized to pad, strips of cardboard are inserted to form the backs of the pads. The press is then tightened and the sheets of paper are kept together by means of an application of cement and cheese cloth. After the cement is allowed to dry, the pads are cut according to size wanted.
25.	The binding machine   For the purpose of binding together the pages of a house organ, reports, or any other literature for office use, a binding machine operated either by hand or by a treadle may be secured. Wire staples are fed into the machine and by means of the treadle the wire is driven thru the paper and clinched on the other side. Sheets of paper to the extent of one-half inch in thickness may be fastened by this machine.
26.	The balinig machine.   Waste paper of all kinds may be turned into money by the use of a baling machine. This machine is about four feet square. Wire with which the paper is to be strapped is placed in the machine. After waste paper of all kinds is dumped into the box, a weight is screwed down. When the box is filled, the sides are removed and the wire fastened, thus making a bale. Paper in this form usually sells for about 60 cents for 100 pounds. There are about 600 pounds to a bale.

Review

Plan a telephone system most suitable for the office with which you are connected.

 

What is the telautograph?

 

What are some of the mathematical machines, statistical machines and mailing machines now in use by different offices ?

 

Do you think that the installation in your office of any of the communication or mathematical machines discussed in this chapter, other than those now in use, would be justified by the resulting increased efficiency ?