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Comptometer operator

Hi Dave forgot to say they moved from there to the top of Digbeth. I just had a memory flash back. I did visit them after I had my twins and they were still the same lads who had worked ad Sumlock for many years. There was another company attatched to them will try to remember the name. Yes you used to go up in an old rickety lift and my office was above the snooker hall. Do you remember when the Queen and Duke visited Birmingham and they drove past there?. I have a photo somewhere. I remember the many pigeons making their nests on the ledges and then rearing their babies.
 
Brummie a long time ago said:
View attachment 169048
This photograph is from the journal "Office Magazine" for January 1955 and has the caption "Over 180 girls a year pass through the Liverpool school for Comptometer operators run by Felt & Tarrant Ltd. Course normally lasts three months, but there is a shorter course, provided free, which covers three weeks and deals with one specific application of the Comptometer".


3 Months !
3 weeks for a specific application !

View attachment 169049
The photograph above shows a "Comptometer Educator", which is a dummy "abbreviated" Comptometer used for training purposes. It is used to practice entering complete numbers in one movement using all the fingers of the hand.

Source for both: http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/comptometer.html

I presume this little box was 'homework' for the students.

Perhaps the really advanced engineering models had logarithmic gears inside. :(

Andrew.
Click to expand...
Andrew, I doubt the logarithmic gears :cool:
 
G G Jean said:
There was another company attatched to them will try to remember the name. Yes you used to go up in an old rickety lift and my office was above the snooker hall. Do you remember when the Queen and Duke visited Birmingham and they drove past there?. I have a photo somewhere. I remember the many pigeons making their nests on the ledges and then rearing their babies.
Click to expand...

Hi Jean,

I think the other company is Felt and Tarrant, who have been mentioned on other posts, but I believe
they also had an association with Bell Punch and Compucorp.

They brought out a small desk calculator called the Anita 1011 LSI which was supposed to replace
the functions of the comptometer in the early 1970s. It was a truly awful machine to operate, and very
unreliable due to extremely fragile and poorly designed keyswitches which broke on a regular basis.
At over £200 it wasn't exactly cheap either! They had already a line of Anita calculators which were
much bigger and I guess much more expensive, but the small size and the LSI suffix (Large Scale
Integration) was tempting and the manager bought one. Ultimately we stuck with comptometers
until I left R. Whites in 1973.

I remember the Queen visiting around 1955. She went to King Edwards High School, and some of
us from other King Edward Foundation Schools went as well to see her.

We have a fair few pigeons here in Scratby, but nothing on the scale of Birmingham. Our
equivalent here is gulls, and I love feeding them.

Kind regards
Dave
 
Not exactly a comptometer but I operated a huge accounting machine in the 50s/60s
it was built into a desk and had a really long carriage that went back and forward.
I fed in a long roll of paper and it printed out the customers order, their invoice and our copy, it was really noisy
and when my first son was born I put his noisiness down to the fact that he heard so much noise before he was born:)
I was sent by my employer to learn how to operate the machine in, I think ,Albert street and I think it was Olivetti who made it.
 
Alberta said:
Not exactly a comptometer but I operated a huge accounting machine in the 50s/60s
it was built into a desk and had a really long carriage that went back and forward.
I fed in a long roll of paper and it printed out the customers order, their invoice and our copy, it was really noisy
and when my first son was born I put his noisiness down to the fact that he heard so much noise before he was born:)
I was sent by my employer to learn how to operate the machine in, I think ,Albert street and I think it was Olivetti who made it.
Click to expand...
Sounds like an impact style printer for multiple sheets. I do remember how noisy they were. I think the later versions were covered by and acoustic (so called) enclosure.
 
Before the electronic computer there were some amazingly complicated mechanical devices. Once the big electronic computer got established there was a need for high-speed printing and the mechanical experts took up the challenge in a big way, noise was a secondary consideration.

I never heard a true lineprinter in action but that must have been something, with perhaps 132 type bars being struck simultaneously by type hammers, a whole line being struck in one go. Some alternatives produced really weird sounds. We used band printers in which a steel band holding an instance of each character circulated at high speed. Again each column had its own hammer but in this case the hammer only struck when the right character was in the right column. The noise could be quite chaotic with the odd bit of order if a character was repeated.

As an aside, I think that without the mechanical typewriter it would have been hard to introduce the electronic computer. The typewriter gave people the mindset that writing can fit in a grid, i.e. 80 columns and 24 lines to a page. Without that introduction the pen and quill users would have had to wait for high-resolution displays, printers and the software and processing power to drive them. We owe our electronic present to our mechanical past!
 
Spargone said:
Before the electronic computer there were some amazingly complicated mechanical devices. Once the big electronic computer got established there was a need for high-speed printing and the mechanical experts took up the challenge in a big way, noise was a secondary consideration.

I never heard a true lineprinter in action but that must have been something, with perhaps 132 type bars being struck simultaneously by type hammers, a whole line being struck in one go. Some alternatives produced really weird sounds. We used band printers in which a steel band holding an instance of each character circulated at high speed. Again each column had its own hammer but in this case the hammer only struck when the right character was in the right column. The noise could be quite chaotic with the odd bit of order if a character was repeated.

As an aside, I think that without the mechanical typewriter it would have been hard to introduce the electronic computer. The typewriter gave people the mindset that writing can fit in a grid, i.e. 80 columns and 24 lines to a page. Without that introduction the pen and quill users would have had to wait for high-resolution displays, printers and the software and processing power to drive them. We owe our electronic present to our mechanical past!
Click to expand...
In the early 80’s we were using sort matrix printers, narrow and wide carriages. A couple of engineers in my group to an IBM Selectric printer and tied it to a computer that could produce “Customer Quality “ letters. The Selectric was an electronic typewriter with mechanical head.
 
I left Cannings in August 1972, threw everýthing up and left to seek my fortune in Plymouth. My in laws lived in a single concrete block built holiday chalet and I have our modest collection of furniture in one bedroom and I occupied another bedroom, unfortunately the streets were not paved with gold and I was unemployed for three months with no public funds to support me. Eventually I got a job £9,00 per week, at Cannings I was earning £16.00 per week. The job as a wages clerk at a large construction company. No knowledge of wages, but even in 1963, all the work was done by machines, individuals wage calculation done by a Sumlock comptometer operator and the wages calculated and printed etc on 2 Burroughs Sensimatic machines. Big floor mounted machines that clattered for 3 days, that was how long it took them to handle the wages for 750 men,which at that time totalled about £2500.00 per week. Iwas allowed the one Sumlock operator up until 3pm on Monday and up till 11 on Tuesday morning. The rest of the time all three Sumlock operators were calculating bills of quantities and calculating partial payments and final bills etc. Etc.
Bob
 
Richard Dye said:
In the early 80’s we were using sort matrix printers, narrow and wide carriages. A couple of engineers in my group to an IBM Selectric printer and tied it to a computer that could produce “Customer Quality “ letters. The Selectric was an electronic typewriter with mechanical head.
Click to expand...
I have an IBM 'Golfball' typewriter in the loft. I made up an interface cable, bought a box for the interface and started to populate a driver board. The original 'ball' only had uppercase letters but I managed to buy a mixed case ball. By then the enthusiasm had waned and the LX-80 9 pin dot matrix printer plus feed mechanism that I bought put an end to that! Loaded with 'microperf' paper the results were quite presentable I thought. We started using wide-carriage dot matrix printers at work, (they were red and grey, can't recall the make), but hidden away in the computer room were a couple of Diabalo 630 daisy-wheel printers. Coupled with a carbon ribbon they were 'print quality'. Now with laser printers the only noise is the paper feed.
 
Spargone said:
I have an IBM 'Golfball' typewriter in the loft. I made up an interface cable, bought a box for the interface and started to populate a driver board. The original 'ball' only had uppercase letters but I managed to buy a mixed case ball. By then the enthusiasm had waned and the LX-80 9 pin dot matrix printer plus feed mechanism that I bought put an end to that! Loaded with 'microperf' paper the results were quite presentable I thought. We started using wide-carriage dot matrix printers at work, (they were red and grey, can't recall the make), but hidden away in the computer room were a couple of Diabalo 630 daisy-wheel printers. Coupled with a carbon ribbon they were 'print quality'. Now with laser printers the only noise is the paper feed.
Click to expand...
Spargone, it was the golf ball Selectric that we used!
 
My best friend at primary school came from Kenya, his mother was a comptometer operator, she was easily able to find work in the early 1960s. I have certainly never used one, but was taught to use a much simpler plus adder in GPO Telecommunications in the 1970s. We had a single computer which was programmed with punched paper tape and the figures transmitted to London via a modem. But the figures were also hand calculated and entered on a paper monthly cost statement. Computers were new and not trusted yet with the figures. An Executive Officer could work her machine like lightening, long division and multiplication were possible for her. Well beyond me, I could add up and take away accurately, but slowly by the time I left in 1977.
 
Stokkie said:
I have certainly never used one, but was taught to use a much simpler plus adder in GPO Telecommunications in the 1970s.
Click to expand...
Pedant's Corner: Post Office Telecommunications from 1969! I recall staff striking out the 'G' from printed letterheads, what a mess, but I guess they were saving the public purse from buying more paper?

I have vague memories of something like PERT being used on a London-based computer for internal planning then someone in MTRHQ devised a scheme where it could all be done by an Admin. Officer using a manual spreadsheet.
 
Spargone said:
Pedant's Corner: Post Office Telecommunications from 1969! I recall staff striking out the 'G' from printed letterheads, what a mess, but I guess they were saving the public purse from buying more paper?

I have vague memories of something like PERT being used on a London-based computer for internal planning then someone in MTRHQ devised a scheme where it could all be done by an Admin. Officer using a manual spreadsheet.
Click to expand...
Spargone, I learned PERT (performance evaluation review technique) which was originally used by the military and difficult. It was replaced by Gantt charts named after the inventor. Initially this was manually worked then along came Lotus & Microsoft with automated versions making it very easy to update which was the Achillies heel with PERT.
 
Spargone said:
Pedant's Corner: Post Office Telecommunications from 1969! I recall staff striking out the 'G' from printed letterheads, what a mess, but I guess they were saving the public purse from buying more paper?

I have vague memories of something like PERT being used on a London-based computer for internal planning then someone in MTRHQ devised a scheme where it could all be done by an Admin. Officer using a manual spreadsheet.
Click to expand...
I'm happy to be corrected! Post Office Telecommunications had the ethos of a Civil Service department, complete with tea trollies and chairs without arms for clerical assistants, arms for clerical officers and a small rug for executive officers. All used the plus adder though.
 
It was not just the civil service. At Cadburys, up to the 1960s there was a strict hierarchy for desks, they increasing in size with promotion. It was dying out when I joined, but someone a bit older than me told me of how when she was promoted they did not have the correct size desk available , so the carpenters ( there was a full range of tradesmen then available in the factory) had to cut down a larger wooden desk to the correct size
 
mikejee said:
It was not just the civil service. At Cadburys, up to the 1960s there was a strict hierarchy for desks, they increasing in size with promotion. It was dying out when I joined, but someone a bit older than me told me of how when she was promoted they did not have the correct size desk available , so the carpenters ( there was a full range of tradesmen then available in the factory) had to cut down a larger wooden desk to the correct size
Click to expand...
My goodness!
 
Richard Dye said:
Spargone, I learned PERT (performance evaluation review technique) which was originally used by the military and difficult. It was replaced by Gantt charts named after the inventor. Initially this was manually worked then along came Lotus & Microsoft with automated versions making it very easy to update which was the Achillies heel with PERT.
Click to expand...
Wow, good old lotus 123. I became (as you had to) quite proficient with Lotus 123, the DOS version. I worked as a QS for a local authority, who were quite happy to let staff sit for hours with a pocket calculator, pen and paper working out weekly returns.

I really did enjoy using spread sheets and databases to cut away some of the very repetitive tasks and pull-out significant trends in the data.
 
Morturn said:
Wow, good old lotus 123. I became (as you had to) quite proficient with Lotus 123, the DOS version. I worked as a QS for a local authority, who were quite happy to let staff sit for hours with a pocket calculator, pen and paper working out weekly returns.

I really did enjoy using spread sheets and databases to cut away some of the very repetitive tasks and pull-out significant trends in the data.
Click to expand...
I worked for a large engineering company which used Lotus 123 and it still works with the latest version of Windows 11 as seen below. I have some old spreadsheets in my computer so use it occasionally.
Untitled (Large).jpg
 
Morturn said:
Is lotus 123 still around?
Click to expand...
Looking in my pc I can see I installed Lotus Smartsuite in 2019 when I was running Windows 10 and it stayed in the pc though the upgrades to Windows 11. I can't remember which website I used.
If you enter 'download lotus smartsuite 9.8 free' into Google Search it leads to 'winworldpc' which appears to have copies of Smartsuite. Other websites also appear to be available.
Usual cautions needed !
 
oldMohawk said:
Looking in my pc I can see I installed Lotus Smartsuite in 2019 when I was running Windows 10 and it stayed in the pc though the upgrades to Windows 11. I can't remember which website I used.
If you enter 'download lotus smartsuite 9.8 free' into Google Search it leads to 'winworldpc' which appears to have copies of Smartsuite. Other websites also appear to be available.
Usual cautions needed !
Click to expand...
Thanks.

Just curious really, I thought Lotus 123 was an excellent programme. For a time far better than Excel. But it seems like MS took the advantage and Lotus 123 seemed to fall behind.

I recall the same thing with Coral Draw too.
 
Yes I thought Lotus 123 was excellent but everyone I knew used MS Office so I converted and now use OpenOffice or LibreOffice both of which imported the 123 files without problems.
 
Morturn said:
Wow, good old lotus 123. I became (as you had to) quite proficient with Lotus 123, the DOS version. I worked as a QS for a local authority, who were quite happy to let staff sit for hours with a pocket calculator, pen and paper working out weekly returns.

I really did enjoy using spread sheets and databases to cut away some of the very repetitive tasks and pull-out significant trends in the data.
Click to expand...
Mort, what I also remember that IBM had an opportunity to acquire Lotus or Microsoft, they chose Lotus! Oh what it might have been.
 
Morturn said:
Thanks.

Just curious really, I thought Lotus 123 was an excellent programme. For a time far better than Excel. But it seems like MS took the advantage and Lotus 123 seemed to fall behind.

I recall the same thing with Coral Draw too.
Click to expand...
Mort, Lotus and Corel were good however when l started my company in 1989 basically engineering we had to make decision Lotus vs Microsoft. This was a big move for us with 100 plus people and needed to be integrated.
My son started graduate school where he was required to have a computer with Microsoft office on it. Speaking to head or their computer group about why, he said office was fully integrated, required many fewer key strokes etc. Never looked back and have used Outlook everywhere. Yesterday I had calls using Microsofts version of zoom. One was to Sweden the other linked Germany & Indi, flawless.
 
Thinking back I can remember using 'Visicalc' on an Apple 2 computer in the early 1980s. It was known as a 'Visible Calculator' and we thought it was marvellous at the time. I seemed to remember a version which ran on a Commodore Pet but the company bought an IBM PC on which Lotus 123 was installed and Visicalc faded out for us.
 
oldMohawk said:
Thinking back I can remember using 'Visicalc' on an Apple 2 computer in the early 1980s. It was known as a 'Visible Calculator' and we thought it was marvellous at the time. I seemed to remember a version which ran on a Commodore Pet but the company bought an IBM PC on which Lotus 123 was installed and Visicalc faded out for us.
Click to expand...
Dan Bricklin, originator of VisiCalc, explains how it came about here.
The computer spreadsheet was a great invention but I am not sure it was good for mathematics. (I solved a good few problems by using an incremental approach with a spreadsheet rather work out the appropiate function). Another use of spreadsheets, which I strongly deprecate, is using it for presenting tables, Word etc. do that job far better! (If nothing else wordprocessors make one very aware that a page has a finite size, something speadsheets pretend they aren't!
 
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