BUSINESS EFFICIENCY AIDS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 55, 27 November 1937, Page 14

BUSINESS EFFICIENCY AIDS

Inventions That Help

Typewritew worked by invisible fngers, whispering telephones, ma cl-iues that-will sign a mere three thou' •and cheques in an hour — these and •cores of other rernarkable devices that put a touch of magic to the most humdrnm of- offiee tasks were being shown recently at the Business Efficiency Exhibition in London. Popular notions of "high-powered" business methods across the Atlantic would pale before some of the inventions to be sden here. Everything is directed to orderly speed and quietness by processes sufficiently complex to have tnrned a whole cycle hack .to •implicity. One qf the objeets of the organisers is to enable controllers of businesses to inow where they stand at the end of each day and by eliminating a { ( carryover" of work to ensure. that itaffs enjoy adequate relaxation. The cheque-signing maehine, for instance, does away with much of the present delay in large concerns caused by waiting for individual signatures. It is proof against forgery and is cOmbined with the "protectograph" method of puneMng figures and words on cheques. A problem that becomes more acute in large offices in storing yast quantities of documents is solved by the ffling by filrn proeess. With this the doeuments aTe put through a maehine ^ and photographed, and they are so

greatly reduced in size that niue thousand may be contained in one hundred feet of film 16 mm. wide. When reference is needed to a document the appropriate reel is simply passed through an illuminated enlarger Most of the central banks in London have already installed this system of filing. The uses of the dictaphone are rapidly developing. One of the most recent is the "telecord," an apparatus which will record conversations by telephone. Each year typewriters become more ingenious and less noisy. There is now a- electrically operated model whose keys need only be lightly caressed; the automatic typewriter worlts on the system of a player-piano and needs n6 typist. Ita virtue is that it will turn out stock letters all day and make them look personal. A most interesting exhibit is the origmal typewriter, or "writing maehine," as he called it,«first used by Mark Twain in 1871. It loolcs its age, but still works well, and is decorated with paintings of fruit and fiowers. There is no end of filing systems. Seotland Yard is said to be installing one of them for their records department, by which the folders are hung edgeways on racks. Everything is designed to save timo and space. Tho nasty eflges on office furniture are being round ed off, and ofQce chairs made to measure.