The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-04-27

Copyright, 1924, in United States and
 canada by North American Newspaper
 Alliance.)
 NEW YORK, April 26.jOnce there was a poor bookkeeper, with seven children and a house in Flatbush with a mortgage on it. He was round-should- cred and near-sighted and had to work nights. One night, alone in his office, he was typing an invoice. It was ten ibly complicated. Eleven kegs of molasses were all mixed up with 21a per cent off for cash 12M Manila tags No. 4-packing and transport balances brought forward, and nine kegs of nails. The poor bookkeeper was so tired he could hardly hit the keys, when suddenly there stood by his type writer a quaint little man, about four inches high, with a leather perkin, long white beard, and a feather in his cap.
 Allow me-" said the little man, mak- ing a deep bow. He then took the feather from his cap and waved it over the keyboard of the typewriter. All by themselves, the keys began tapping, and there at the bottom of the page was the answersto all the tangled problems all the kegs of molasses, all the im- pish little debits and credits, all the tumble of things and amounts and decimals and fractions, all regimented, added, subtracted and summed up. So the poor bookkeeper caught the s 20 train for Flatbush, and
 Yes, Rollo, this is true story, if you just fancy a little black box sud- denly appearing beside the typewriter, instead of the little man. Science is the miracle worker who has replaced the kindly gnome. The little black box, which may be attached to any type writer, and which has it's working gear concealed in a special desk underneath, does all that the little man did for the boQkkeeped-A Id more.
 This machine, sponsored by the Re search corporation, national non profit organization for the Intolerance and administration of inventions, prom ises profoundly to affect the business of accounting and immeasureably lightent he burdens of office work. It represents many years of profund in quiry in the maze of mathematical reaserch, and it records signal triumph in the applica tion of purely ab- stract conclusions to the tangible, work a-day problem of saving human energy and Tightening tedium and drudgery.
 The one most sensational accomplish ment of this machine is indicated by the fable of the bookkeeper at the be- ginning of this story. You do not have to type your figures on a typewriter and then go through the second opera tion of repeating them on an adding machine. You simply type your invoice, for instance including the sums of ad- dltion, substraction and multiplication If you wish, and then when you have finished, the typewriter keys tick off the answer, on the same sheet of paper, with all the subordinate problems cor rectly solved.
 The invention is called the "Barbel'' machine, the name being a combina- tion of the names of Capt. Robert A. Bell and Mark Barr. Captain Bell worked with Barr in England, 12 years ago, on the preliminary investigation. The present system includes many new principles which enables the machine to perform all arithmetrical .manipula- tions.
 Machine Does Algebra
 But the machines repertoire is not confined to arithmetic It knows algebra as well. In fact, it's mathematical basis Is algebraic. One of the main objectives of the inventors in their earlier re- search wdS to produce machine which would take care of plus and minus quantities. This was, and has been to date, one out of the outstanding problems of calculating machines. This machine does it. All you need is a red and black ribbon on your typewriter. Suppose you are jotting down debits end among them appear certain credit stems. Suppose the credit items give a total greater than that of the debits. The machine has the problem of sub- tracing larger from a smaller amount, impossible for calculating ma chimes heretofore. It solves it algebra ically, and records the answer in red that IS, 1t merely hops onto the red ribbon and the result appears properlv as a credit. The typist need not know or care anything about the final bal ance The machine attends to that, and. after shifting to the red ribbon to record the credit-an algebraic minus quantity-drops the ribbon back to the black.
 The machines now perfected do null ] tiplication, discount, interest, rates of exchange, addition and subtraction, cube and square root. and raise any number to any desired power-within their computation range. A much wider application, suitable for engineering work, comes within the scope of the principle. f>%
 Back To Chinese
 ] The earlier researches of th9 inven- tors led them through the .investiga- tions of Babbage, and other great math- ematicians who had attacked the prob lem, but it was not until they had fol lowed the thread back to early Chinese beginnings that they found the key to the principle they sought. The old Chineses abacus or counting machine, consisting of colored balls, shifted on rack, gave them the connecting link.
 The Barbel operation consists of the shifting and re-combining of steel balls each A of an inch in diameter, and not in the working of wheels, cams and pinions, as in other machines These balls are counted at the rate oi so a second. The counters are simple devices into which the predetermined number of balls are delivered by trig- gers, and the balls in passing register their numbers upon dials connected electrically to the printing devices,