Wellington Accountants Surprised.

When the Wellington Branch of the New Zealand Society of Accountants recently arranged to begin its winter series of lecture-meetings at the Railway Station it had several pleasant surprises. The first was an attendance of about 250, the largest in the history of the branch; another was in the quality and quickness of the Refreshment Branch's service in one of the big social halls; the third was in the demonstrations of modern accounting and statistical machines.

After the Chief Accountant (Mr. W. Bishop) had given a clear exposition of the scope of operations in the Branch, he invited his hearers to ask questions when they were watching the machines. Well, they took full advantage of the invitation, and found the operators ready with the right replies. They had expected some thrills from those machines, and their remarks indicated that high expectation had been surpassed by reality.

Altogether in Wellington the Accountancy Branch has 44 machines, comprising key-punchers, sorters, tabulators, calculators, adders, book-keepers, addressographs, a multigraph and one known as a “ditto.” This name is due to its ability to give fifty or sixty good copies of one large sheet of closely-typed tables. The copies, from one striking of the ribbons, are in perfect alignment, in three colours.

No doubt a modern poet somewhere could write some smart lines about the girls who work those machines with such quick cleverness, but perhaps a better tribute could have been paid by one of the old-time bards.