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The Accounting Review Vol. 30 No. 4 1955

ELECTRONIC DATA PROCESSOR--A MILESTONE IN MACHINE METHOD.

Harry D. Kerrigan

Professor, University of Connecticut. 1

Abstract

Machine methods, the key to office automation, have developed impressively ever since the invention of the adding machine in the 1880's. Soon afterwards appeared the desk calculators. These milestones of machine method have progressively increased the areas of "automated" office operations. They have thereby progressively narrowed the need for the pencil and paper, the elemental tools of the accountant. As savers of human energy and time, all devices for mechanizing office tasks possess the same attributes, and the differences between them are relative only, important as the differences are. All of the known devices will continue to be useful, for the situations in the modern office in which machine methods are needed are as varied as they are vast. No doubt the future will see a more frequent reassessment of the functional usefulness of a particular machine in use to see if its versatility, speed and capability enable it to perform a task as economically as some other machine available in the market.

DOI
10.2308/tar-7061920
Volume
30
Issue
4
Pages
660-665
Language
en
Sources
openalex crossref

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