This is the first office machine that I worked with on a daily basis while employed as an accounting clerk in the Data Processing Department at Morgan Guaranty and Trust Company at 10 Wall Street. I started at the bank a few days after I was honorably discharged from the U.S. Marines on late 1965.
10 Wall Street
The machine was referred to as a tabulating machine which produced a report from trays and trays of IBM Keypuch Cards. The cards were keypunched by a whole crew of women, who for some reason, mostly lived in Brooklyn. Closeness and commuting was a major reason for choosing Wall Street was their reason as later informed by the girls. My job was to run the tabulating machine for assorted reports. I would get a listing for a specific report and pull the trays that were required a specific number of trays.
All the IBM Cards were keypunched which used a machine like the one in the picture above. The majority of the people that operated these keypunch machine were women. These girls were fast and would look at a piece of paper that required that an IBM Card would be punched up wih specific information. For the job that I was assigned to, it was primarily about stock holder reports. The girls would keypunch all the cards and I believe that they were visually looked at for uniformity.
After the IBM Cards were keypunched, the IBM Cards were put through a Sorting Machine before the cards were put through a Tabulating Machine, which produces a report. Most of the reports that I worked on were Stock Holder Reports that were required by Stock Reporting Department. The bank was the recording facility that manitained the stock holders of record. It was a daily function at the bank to run these types of reports.
I believe that I got the bank job because of my interest in computers. All the time that I worked at the bank, I would peek into the Data Processing Department. I inquired about the opportunity of getting into the Data Processing Department and didn't get any positive feedback in that directions. I did notice that the majority of the people that worked in the Data Processing Department were of one nationality and that wasn't me. It took me three months before I decided to pack it in and move on.
On my last day, I was walking out of the lobby and heard someone calling my name out. I turned around and found that voice came from Martin Colletti, who lived on 87th Street and I believe was related in some manner but never could confirm that one. He was working at the bank and worked with his father and asked if he could help change my mind about leaving. I always wondered what would have happened if I had said maybe I would like to stay.
I was getting married in 1966 and utilized a family connection to get my next position at Mallinckrodt Chemicals Company on 42nd Street and 2nd Avenue. I was right across the street from the Daily News Building. I was getting closer to working in Midtown Manhattan. My commute to the city was getting shorter with each new position.
Monroe Claculator
This was the standard Monroe calculator that was popular in your typical accounting office back in the late 1960s. The model that I was working with was a little newer than what you see in the above picture and about half the size in width. Not as mnay keys to punch and the version that I had for a long time had a roll of tape that would print ouf so that you could compare tapes to confirm your totals of what you were tabulating.
I was a Pricing Clerk and worked daily on invoices received via the sales people in our office. I worked with a fellow called Ray Miranda. We used to race everyday keypunching into an adding machine each invoice total to get to a grand total of the invoices that we priced that day. I believe over the year, I was only able to beat him one time. He was fast.
A quick Mallinckrodt Chemical Company story. Every day at this company, it was the same thing that happened. As you got towards the end of the day, you brought the daily invoices into the Data Processing Department which were keypunched into the Data Processign Equipment and reports would be run and given to the Office Manager. If I recall, his name was Ted. Every day, it was the same routine, except for Thursday when I notice that one fellow, who happened to be a few desks away from me, was always on the edge of his seat on Thursday.
Just interjecting a note here about your typical office in these days. Most offices did not have partitions but were more of an open office type. You got to see everybody in the office. It was during this period of time that partitions started to become very popular. Most bosses had their own offices for privacy. It was one big happy family. There was no where to hide.
As I got to know Ray and the staff better, I would notice the interaction with this one guy would get more comical during the day on Thursday. As the clock closed in on 5 o'clock, you would see that this guy had his desk cleared and was sitting on the edge of his seat and getting ready to make a dash for the elevator. I looked over at Ray and asked what was his thing. Ray said that Thursday was spaghetti night, which was his favorite meal and a night with his wife was his desert. It was his one night of the week and he was not going to waste it. You did not want to be in his path on his way to the elevator.
Another quick Mallinckrodt Chemical Company memory. It was at this company that I decided to move onto to a company that I would be given an opportunity to actually work in, or, with Data Processing, in any manner that I could. My next job would take me to Pepsico, Inc. The Data Processing Department still had more of one nationality and I decided to move on if I was ever to make a change. I learned that the person that I was handing off the invoice to in the Data Processing Department was a famous singer for the Crests, Johnny Maestro. I never knew that for the whole time I was working there. It is a small world after all.
My next move would take me closer to working closely with some high level corporate staff when I was at Pepsico, Inc. The story will continue and the closer I get to my dream of working with Data Processing and that new tool called a Computer. To be continued.
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