From Cave Paintings to the Internet A Chronological and Thematic Database on the History of Information and Media Accounting / Business Machines Timeline

According to one theory about the origins of counting and writing developed by Denise Schmand-Besserat, around 8000 BCE the Palaeolithic notched tallies representing the simplest form of counting — in one-to-one correspondence — were superseded by Neolithic tokens in various geometric forms suited for concrete counting. This invention is thought to have been used for about 5000 years prior to the use of abstract numbers which led to writing about 3500 BCE, and then to mathematics about 2600 BCE. Tokens followed basic geometric forms, such as spheres, tetrahedrons, cones, cylinders, discs, quadrangles, triangles. They were first kept in baskets, leather pouchs, clay bowls, and later within clay bullas. 

"The first securely datable mathematical table in world history comes from the Sumerian city of Shuruppag, c. 2600 BCE. The table is ruled into three columns on each side with ten rows on the front or obverse side. The first columns of the obverse list length measures from c. 3.6km to 360 m in descending units of 360 m, followed by the Sumerian word sa ('equal' and/ or 'opposite') while the final column gives their products in area measure. Only six rows are extant or partially preserved on the reverse. They continue the table in smaller units, from 300 to 60 m in 60 m steps, and then perhaps (in the damaged and missing lower half) from 56 to 6 m in 6 m steps. While the table is organized along two axes, there is just one axis of calculation, namely, the horizontal multiplications. Around a thousand tablets were excavated from Shuruppage, almost all of them from houses and buildings which burned down in a city-wide fire in about 2600 BCE, but sadly we have no detailed context for this table because its excavation number was lost or never recorded." (Eleanor Robson, "Tables and tabular formatting in Sumer, Babylonia, and Assyria, 2500 BCE-50," Campbell-Kelly et al [eds]. The History of Mathematical Tables from Sumer to Spreadsheets [2003] 27-29).

Probably the most famous original document of Babylonian mathematics is Plimpton 322, a partly broken clay tablet, approximately 13cm wide, 9cm tall, and 2cm thick. New York publisher George A. Plimpton purchased the tablet from archaeological dealer, Edgar J. Banks about 1922, and bequeathed it with the rest of his collection to Columbia University in the mid 1930s. According to Banks, the tablet came from Senkereh, a site in sourthern Iraq, corresponding to the ancient city of Larsa. 

This tablet has a table of four columns and 15 rows of numbers in cuneiform script, and has been called the only true mathematical table surviving from the period.

Though the tablet was formerly thought to have been a listing of Pythagorean triples, Eleanor Robson rejected earlier mathematical misconceptions of the tablet and pointed out that historical, cultural and linguistic evidence all reveal that the tablet is more likely "a list of regular reciprocal pairs."

Robson, "Words and Pictures. New Light on Plimpton 322," American Mathematical Monthly 109 (2001) 105-121.

Because the numbering systems of the Mesopotamians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans are not convenient for extensive calculation, it is believed that they used some sort of mechanical calculating device. The simplest form of calculating device is a kind of table or tablet on which calculation can be written in sand or dust, and then easily erased. This is the "sandboard abacus". One derivation of the Latin word abacus comes from the Greek abakos from the Hebrew word abaq, meaning dust.

In his Histories Herodotus of Halicarnassus, written about this time, stated that the Egyptians "write their characters and reckon with pebbles, bringing their hand from right to left, while the Greeks go from left to right." D.E. Smith, in his History of Mathematics II, p. 160 quotes this statement by Herodotus and writes, "Right to left order was that of the hieratic script and there is probably some relation between this script and the abacus. No wall pictures thus far discovered give any evidence of the use of the abacus, but in any collection of Egyptian antiquities there may be found disks of various sizes which may have been used as counters."

Excluding counting on the fingers, counting boards are the earliest known counting device, and a precursor of the abacus. They were made from stone or wood and the counting was done on the board with beads or pebbles or or sand or dust.  These devices have also been called the "sandboard abacus." The earliest surviving example of a counting board or a gaming board may be a tablet found about 1850 CE on the Greek island of Salamis which dates back to about 300 BCE. It is preserved in the Greek National Museum at Athens. 

"It is a slab of white marble 149 cm long, 75 cm wide, and 4.5 cm thick, on which are 5 groups of markings. In the center of the tablet is a set of 5 parallel lines equally divided by a vertical line, capped with a semi-circle at the intersection of the bottom-most horizontal line and the single vertical line. Below these lines is a wide space with a horizontal crack dividing it. Below this crack is another group of eleven parallel lines, again divided into two sections by a line perpendicular to them, but with the semi-circle at the top of the intersection; the third, sixth and ninth of these lines are marked with a cross where they intersect with the vertical line."  Three sets of Greek symbols (numbers from the acrophonic system) are arranged along the left, right and bottom edges of the tablet.

Chinese Emperor Wang Mang institutes an unprecedented tax— the income tax —at the rate of 10 percent of profits, for professionals and skilled labor.

Previously, all Chinese taxes were either head taxes (poll taxes) or property taxes.

The European table abacus or reckoning table  became standardized to some extent by this time. The pebbles previously used as counters were replaced by specially minted coin-like objects that were cast, thrown, or pushed on the abacus table. They were called jetons from jeter (to throw) in France, and werpgeld for “thrown money” in Holland.

The anonymous Arte dell’Abbaco . . . on the operation of the abacus, printed in Treviso, Italy, probably by Gerardus de Lisa, de Flandria, is the first dated book on arithmetic. It is possible that some undated pamphlets on Algorithmus may predate this work.

"Frank J. Swetz translated the complete work using Smith's notes in 1987 in his Capitalism & Arithmetic: The New Math of the 15th Century. Swetz used a copy of the Treviso housed in the Manuscript Library at Columbia University. The volume found its way to this collection via a curious route. Maffeo Pinelli (1785), an Italian bibliophile, is the first known owner. After his death his library was purchased by a London book dealer and sold at auction on February 6, 1790. The book was obtained for three shillings by Mr. [Michael] Wodhull. About 100 years later the Arithmetic appeared in the library of Brayton Ives, a New York lawyer. When Ives sold the collection of books at auction, George [Arthur] Plimpton, a New York publisher, acquired the Treviso and made it an acquisition to his extensive collection of early scientific [i.e. mathematics] texts. Plimpton donated his library to Columbia University in 1936. Original copies of the Treviso Arithmetic are extremely rare" (Wikipedia article Treviso Arithmetic, accessed 01-10-2009).

ISTC no. ia01141000.

Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli publishes at the press of Paganinus de Paganinis in Venice Summa de arithmetica geometria, proporzioni et proporzionalita.

This was “the first great general work on mathematics printed” (Smith, Rara arithmetica, 56).

“[The Summa] contains a general treatise on theoretical and practical arithmetic; the elements of algebra; a table of moneys, weights and measures used in the various Italian states; a treatise on double-entry bookkeeping; and a summary of Euclid’s geometry. . . . Although it lacked originality, the Summa was widely circulated and studied by the mathematicians of the sixteenth century. Cardano, while devoting a chapter of his Practica arithmetice (1539) to correcting the errors in the Summa, acknowledged his debt to Pacioli. Tartaglia’s General trattato de’ numeri et misure (1556-1560) was styled on Pacioli’s Summa. In the introduction to his Algebra, Bombelli says that Pacioli was the first mathematician after Leonardo Fibonacci to have thrown light on the science of algebra. . . . Pacioli’s treatise on bookkeeping, ‘De computis et scripturis,’ contained in the Summa, was the first printed work setting out the ‘method of Venice,’ that is, double-entry bookkeeping. [Richard] Brown has said [in his History of Accounting and Accountants, 1905] that ‘The history of bookkeeping during the next century consists of little else than registering the progress of the De computis through the various countries of Europe” (Dictionary of Scientific Biography).

ISTC no. il00315000.

The Japanese adopt the Chinese 1/5 abacus via Korea. In Japanese the abacus is called soroban.

The 1/4 abacus appeared in Japan about 1630.

Astronomer Christoph Scheiner invents the pantograph.

This was probably the first copying device. Scheiner did not publish an account of this invention until 25 years later, when he issued Pantographice in Rome, 1631.

A painting by Pieter Breughel the Younger, of which one copy dated 1621 entitled the Village Lawyer is in the Museum voor Schone Kunster, Ghent, Belgium, and another copy dated 1620-40, and entitled Paying the Tax is in the Armand Hammer collection at the University of Southern California Fisher Museum of Art, perhaps caricatures the way paper accounting or legal records were maintained at the time. Records are shown in piles of bundles on tables, in bundles on shelves, in what appears to be sacks of bundles hanging on walls, in sheets of paper bundled together that may be tacked up on walls, and in piles on the floor. In short the methods of organizing and storing information appear sloppy, inefficient, and possibly chaotic.

In Dissertations academiques. . . avec un discours sur. . . un cylindre arithmetique published in Paris Pierre Petit describes an arithmetic cylinder, which he says is more affordable and easier to use than Pascal’s Pascaline.

Samuel Morland publishes The Description and Use of Two Arithmetic Instruments, the first monograph on a calculating machine published in English. The book describes modifications to the Pascaline.

Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar of Alsace invents the arithmometer, the first commercially produced adding machine. These machines, which use Leibniz’s stepped drum technology, do not gain many applications until the 1860s or 1870s, by which time Thomas de Colmar has improved them considerably.

The Thomas de Colmar arithmometers remained in relatively limited production through about the start of World War I.

William Austin Burt of Detroit, Michigan invents an early typewriter, called the Typographer. It is cumbersome and difficult to use. Writing a letter with this machine takes longer than writing by hand.

The Prudential Mutual Assurance, Investment and Loan Association is founded.

The Prudential was the first of the great industrial life insurance companies that handled the insurance policies of millions of people, and processed an immense amount of data.

David Edward Hughes invents the first perfected mechanism for printing telegraph messages, using a keyboard in which each key causes the corresponding letter to be printed at a distant receiver.

Hughes's printing mechanism worked something like a "golfball" typewriter, but it was produced before the typewriter was invented.

During the American Civil War, President Lincoln and the United States Congress and pass the Revenue Act of 1862, creating the office of Commissioner of Internal Revenue and enacting a progressive rate income tax to pay war expenses.

"Annual income above $600 was taxed at a 3% rate, but those earning over $10,000 per year were taxed at a 5% rate. This Act repealed the flat rate income tax that had been established by the Revenue Act of the previous year."

"To assure timely collection, income tax was 'withheld at the source' by the employer, with the Act specifying that Federal income tax was a temporary measure that would terminate in 'the year eighteen hundred and sixty-six' " (Wikipedia article on Revenue Act of 1862, accessed 12-27-2008).

Newspaper editor Christopher Latham Sholes and Samuel Soule and Carlos Glidden invent the first practical typewriter.This was the first device to allow the operator to write faster than a person writing by hand.

"Following a strike by compositors at his printing press, he tried building a machine for typesetting, but this was a failure and he quickly abandoned the idea. He arrived at the typewriter through a different route. His initial goal was to create a machine to number pages of a book, tickets, and so on. He began work on this at Kleinsteubers machine shop in Milwaukee, together with a fellow printer Samuel W. Soule, and they patented a numbering machine on November 13, 1866.

"Sholes and Soule showed their machine to Carlos Glidden, a lawyer and amateur inventor at the machine shop working on a mechanical plow, who wondered if the machine could not be made to produce letters and words as well. Further inspiration came in July 1867, when Sholes came across a short note in Scientific American describing the "Pterotype", a prototype typewriter that had been invented by John Pratt in England. Sholes decided that the pterotype was too complex and set out to make his own machine, whose name he got from the article: the typewriting machine, or typewriter.

"For this project, Soule was again enlisted, and Glidden joined them as a third partner who provided the funds. The Scientific American article had described a "literary piano"; the first model that the trio built had a keyboard literally resembling a piano. It had black keys and white keys, laid out in two rows. It did not contain keys for the numerals 0 or 1 because the letters O and I were deemed sufficient:

3 5 7 9 N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

2 4 6 8 . A B C D E F G H I J K L M

"with the first row made of ivory and the second of ebony, the rest of the framework being wooden. It was in this form that Sholes, Glidden and Soule were granted patents for their invention on on June 23, 1868 and July 14. The first document to be produced on a typewriter was a contract that Sholes had written, in his capacity as the Comptroller for the city of Milwaukee. Machines similar to Sholes's had been previously used by the blind for embossing, but by Sholes's time the inked ribbon had been invented, which made typewriting in its current form possible" (Wikipedia article on Christopher Sholes, accessed 05-22-2009).

In 1872 the patent on the Sholes & Glidden Type Writer was sold to E. Remington & Sons, then famous as manufacturers of sewing machines.  Remington started production of their first typewriter on March 1, 1873 in Ilion, New York. The machines, as first produced, were problematic in their operation.

The action of the type bars in the early typewriters were very sluggish and tended to jam frequently. To fix this problem, Christopher Sholes obtained a list of the most common letters used in English, and rearranged his keyboard from an alphabetic arrangement to one in which the most common pairs of letters were spread fairly far apart on the keyboard. Because typists at that time used the "hunt and peck" method, Sholes' arrangement increased the time it took for the typists to hit the keys for common two letter combinations enough to ensure that each type bar had enough time to fall back into place before the next one came up. This new arrangement, which Sholes invented in 1873, was named the Sholes QWERTY keyboard, and is still used today. Though Sholes had never imagined that typing would ever be faster than handwriting, which is usually 20 words per minute (WPM) or less, his invention with the QWERTY keyboard was the first machine to allow the operator to write faster than a person writing by hand.

When produced  by Remington & Sons in 1874 Scholes improved machine was called the “Sholes & Glidden Type Writer.” It had a keyboard with letters and numbers arranged in a four-line pattern (known as QWERTY from the first six letters in the top row), a wooden spacer bar, and a vulcanized india-rubber platen or roller. It only printed capital letters.

About 5000 of the Sholes & Glidden Type Writers were sold between 1874 and 1878, when Remington & Sons introduced the Remington 2.

Travel agent Thomas Cook introduces "circular notes."

This financial product became much better known through the American Express brand of traveler's cheques which were introduced in 1891.

Frank S. Baldwin (United States) and W. T. Odhner (Russia) invent calculators using a true variable-toothed gear, the first real advance in mechanical calculating technology since Gottfried Leibniz's stepped drum (1673). These calculators are called "pinwheel calculators."

The greater ease of use of this technology, its general reliability, and the compact size of the equipment incorporating it caused an explosion of sales in the calculator industry.

Thomas Edison invents the Electric Pen, the forerunner of the mimeograph.

Thomas Edison received US patent 180,857 for "Autographic Printing" on August 8, 1876. The patent covered the electric pen, used for making the stencil, and the flatbed duplicating press. In 1880 Edison obtained a further patent, US 224,665: "Method of Preparing Autographic Stencils for Printing", which covered the making of stencils using a file plate, a grooved metal plate on which the stencil was placed which perforated the stencil when written on with a blunt metal stylus.

It takes three hundred clerks working at The Prudential six months to review its 2,500,000 policies with the assistance of twenty-four Thomas de Colmar arithmometers.

The Remington Model 2 typewriter introduces a shift key, allowing the typing of both upper and lower case letters.

James and John Ritty patent a cash register. It has a large display to record money received and a locked drawer to hold cash receipts.

At the U.S. Census Bureau John Shaw Billings, founder and librarian of the Surgeons General's Library (now the National Library of Medicine), suggests to Herman Hollerith that there ought to be a machine for doing the purely mechanical work of tabulating population and similar statistics. 

Hollerith credited Billings for inspiring him to develop electric punched card tabulating for the census of 1890.

John H. Patterson and his associates acquire the Ritty patents and establish the National Cash Register Company (NCR).

Thomas Edison, who had invented in the electric pen in 1876, agrees to sell his patents for this device to Albert Blake Dick, who had invented the mimeograph stencil.

Edison also agreed to help Dick market the mimeograph under the name, Edison Mimeograph. Marketed by the AB Dick company, the mimeograph became the first widely used electric office duplicating machine.

In his utopian novel Looking Backward,  Edward Bellamy uses the term credit card eleven times—the first description of the use of a card for purchases.

Herman Hollerith patents an electromechanical machine for tabulating information stored on punched cards.

Hollerith's electric punched card tabulator was used in the 1890 United States census — the first major data-processing project to use electrical machinery. It reduced data-processing time by 80 percent over manual methods. (See Reading 4.3.)

William S. Burroughs begins commercial production of his dependable key-driven printing adding machine.

Dorr E. Felt introduces the Comptometer, a non-printing key-driven calculating machine whose chief advantages are speed, versatility, and ease of use.

The "Millionaire" mechanical calculator is introduced in Switzerland.

The "Millionaire" allowed direct multiplication by any digit and was used by government agencies and scientists — especially astronomers — well into the twentieth century.

Herman Hollerith founds the Tabulating Machine Company.

This eventually evolved into IBM.

To improve data processing of the 1900 census, Herman Hollerith adds an automatic card feed to his electric punched card tabulating machine. 

Herman Hollerith sells the Tabulating Machine Company to Charles R. Flint .

Charles R. Flint, a noted trust organizer, merges the Tabulating Machine Company with the Computing Scale Company, the International Time Recording Company, and the Bundy Manufacturing Company to form the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), producing and selling Hollerith tabulating equipment, time clocks, and other business machinery.

James Powers begins manufacturing a punched-card system that competes with Hollerith’s, operating mechanically rather than electrically. His machines were eventually made and sold by Remington Rand.

Brunsviga boasts that they have sold twenty thousand calculators based on the variable-toothed gear technology.

Anthropologist Leslie Leland Locke publishes "The Ancient Quipu, A Peruvian Knot Record," American Anthropologist, New Series I4 (1912) 325-332.

This was the first work to show how the Inca (Inka) Empire and its predecessor societies used the quipu (Khipu) for mathematical and accounting records in the decimal system. Locke stated his conclusions as follows:

"1. These knots were used purely for numerical purposes.

"2. Distances from the main cord were used roughly to locate the orders, which were on a decimal scale.

"3. The quipu was not used for counting or calculating but for record keeping. The mode of tying the knots was not adapted to counting, and there was ne need of its use for such a purpose, as the Quichua language contained a complete and adequate system of numeration.

"4. Other specimens examined contain the same types of knots there being but ten variations in all, two forms for the single knot and eight long knots. These eight differen from each other and from the single knot only in the number of turns taken in tying. There is nothing about any specimen examined to give the slightest suggesion that it was used for any other than numerical purposes.

"5. If the hypothesis that this quipu is a record of the same classes of objects be correct, it would seem to indicate the colors in this case have no special significance, but were taken according to the fancy or convenience of the maker. This does not signify that there was not a rough color scheme in sue for some purposes.

"6. These specimens confirm in a remarkable way the accuracy with which [the Inca] Garcilasso [de la Vega] described the manners and customs of his people."

In 1923 Locke published an expanded version of his research in a monograph entitled The Ancient Quipu or Peruvian Knot Record.

Research on this topic was further advanced by mathematician Marcia Ascher and anthropologist Robert Ascher in Code of the Quipu. A Study of Media, Mathematics, and Culture (1981).

Thomas J. Watson becomes president of Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation, and focuses the company on electric card-tabulating equipment for businesses.

800,000 Burroughs calculating machines have been sold worldwide.

Thomas J. Watson, president of CTR, changes the name of the company to International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).

James Henry Rand, Jr., merges Rand-Kardex with Remington Typewriters and several other office supply companies to form Remington Rand.

IBM adopts the eighty-column punched card, the standard for about the next fifty years, and one of IBM's most profitable products.

Leslie J. Comrie discovers how to use a commercial accounting machine as a difference engine.

With this technique Comrie reformed the production of the Nautical Almanac.

IBM markets the first commercially successful electric typewriter, the Electromatic.

IBM produced electric typewriters until 1990.

The Social Security Act of 1935 requires the U. S. government to keep continuous records on the employment of 26 million individuals.

The first  Social Security Numbers (SSNs) were issued by the Social Security Administration in November 1936 as part of the New Deal Social Security program.

"Within three months, 25 million numbers were issued.

"Before 1986, people often did not have a Social Security number until the age of about 14, since they were used for income tracking purposes, and those under that age seldom had substantial income. In 1986, American taxation law was altered so that individuals over 5 years old without Social Security numbers could not be successfully claimed as dependents on tax returns; by 1990 the threshold was lowered to 1 year old, and was later abolished altogether." (Wikipedia article on Social Security Number, accessed 01-17-2010).

The Charga-Plate bookkeeping system, a precursor of the credit card, is utilized during this period and somewhat later.

"It was a 2 1/2" x 1 1/4" rectangle of sheet metal, similar to a military dog tag, that was embossed with the customer's name, city and state (no address). It held a small paper card for a signature. It was laid in the imprinter first, then a charge slip on top of it, onto which an inked ribbon was pressed. Charga-Plate was a trademark of Farrington Manufacturing Co. Charga-Plates were issued by large-scale merchants to their regular customers, much like department store credit cards of today. In some cases, the plates were kept in the issuing store rather than held by customers. When an authorized user made a purchase, a clerk retrieved the plate from the store's files and then processed the purchase. Charga-Plates speeded back-office bookkeeping that was done manually in paper ledgers in each store, before computers" (Wikipedia article on Credit card, accessed 12-26-2008).

IBM’s German subsidiary, Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen, introduces the Dehomag D11 tabulator, the first automatic sequence-controlled calculator, incorporating internal instructions programmed with a plug board.

Kistermann, "The way to the first automatic sequence-controlled calculator: The 1935 DEHOMAG D 11 tabulator," IEEE Annals of the History of Computing XVII (1995): 33-49.

Chester F. Carlson invents xerography, originally called electrophotography.

Xerography did not become a commercial success until the wide adoption of the xerographic copier first introduced in 1949.

IBM announces the Electromatic Model 04 electric typewriter, featuring proportional spacing.

By assigning varied rather than uniform spacing to different sized characters, the Type 4 recreated the appearance of a printed page, an effect that was enhanced by a typewriter ribbon innovation that produced clearer, sharper words on the page.

The Haloid Company introduces the Model A  xerographic copier, the first commercial electrophotographic copier. 

"Manually operated, it was also known as the Ox Box. An improved version, Camera #1, was introduced in 1950" (Wikipedia article on Xerox 914, accessed 04-21-2009).

The company renamed itself Haloid Xerox in 1958 and shortened its name to Xerox Corporation in 1961.

The Diners Club issues the first "general purpose" credit card, invented by Diners Club founder Frank X. McNamara.

The card allowed members to charge the cost of restaurant bills only.

LEO I (Lyons Electronic Office) runs a program to "evaluate costs, prices and margins of that week's baked output" at tea shop operator J. Lyons and Company in England.

This adaptation of the EDSAC was the first stored-program electronic computer to run business programs on a routine basis. “LEO’s early success owed less to its hardware than to its highly innovative systems-oriented approach to programming, devised and led by David Caminer.”

Richard W. Appel and other students at Harvard Business school issue Electronic Business Mchines: A New Tool for Management.

This was the first report on the application of electronic computers to business. The report was issued before any electronic computer was delivered to an American corporation. (See Reading 10.4.)

UNIVAC I, serial 8, is installed at General Electric Appliance Park outside Louisville, Kentucky.

Serial 8 was the first electronic computer sold to a nongovernmental customer in the United States. It ran the "first successful industrial payroll application."

Stanford Research Institute begins the computerization of the banking industry by demonstrating a prototype electronic accounting machine using its ERMA (Electronic Recording Method of Accounting) system.

MICR (Magnetic Ink Character Reading) is demonstrated to the Bank Management Committee of the American Bankers’ Association.

Bank of America creates the BankAmericard, the first credit card issued by a conventional bank.

Together with its overseas affiliates, this product eventually evolved into the Visa system.

American Express launches the American Express card.

Because American Express previously had an international network of offices in place, and their traveler's' cheques had been accepted throughout the world for decades, this was the first credit card accepted internationally. 

". . . public interest had become so significant that they issued 250,000 cards prior to the official launch date. The card was launched with an annual fee of $6, $1 higher than Diners Club, to be seen as a premium product. The first cards were paper, with the account number and cardmember's name typed. It was not until 1959 that American Express began issuing embossed ISO 7810 plastic cards, an industry first" (Wikipedia article on American Express, accessed 12-27-2008).

Based on technology originally developed at the Stanford Research Institute, General Electric delivers the first 32 ERMA (Electronic Recording Method of Accounting) computing systems to the Bank of America.

The system used MICR (Magnetic Ink Character Reading.) ERMA served as the Bank’s accounting computer and check handling system until 1970.

The United States banking industry adopts MICR, (Magnetic Ink Character Recognition), which allows computers to read the data printed on checks.

Haloid Xerox introduces the Xerox 914, the first successful commercial plain paper xerographic copier, roughly the size of a desk.

". . .  commercial models were not available until March 1960. The first machine, delivered to a Pennsylvania metal-fastener maker, weighed nearly 650 pounds. It needed a carpenter to uncrate it, an employee with 'key operator' training, and its own 20-amp circuit. In an episode of Mad Men, set in 1962, the arrival of the hulking 914 helps get Peggy Olson her own office, after she tells her boss, 'It’s hard to do business and be credible when I’m sharing with a Xerox machine' " (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-mother-of-all-invention/8123/, accessed 06-11-2010).

QUOTRON, a computerized stock-quotation system using a Control Data Corporation computer, is introduced.

Quotron became popular with stockbrokers, signaling the end of traditional ticker tape.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) begins using social security numbers as tax ID numbers.

IBM introduces the Magnetic Tape/Selectric Typewriter (MT/ST).

"With this, for the first time, typed material could be edited without having to retype the whole text or chop up a coded copy. On the tape, information could be stored, replayed (that is, retyped automatically from the stored information), corrected, reprinted as many times as needed, and then erased and reused for other projects.

"This development marked the beginning of word processing as it is known today. It also introduced word processing as a definite idea and concept. The term was first used in IBM's marketing of the MT/ST as a 'word processing' machine. It was a translation of the German word textverabeitung, coined in the late 1950s by Ulrich Steinhilper, an IBM engineer. He used it as a more precise term for what was done by the act of typing. IBM redefined it 'to describe electronic ways of handling a standard set of office activities -- composing, revising, printing, and filing written documents.' "

The first automatic teller machine (ATM) is installed.

Dates conflict as to whether this was in 1969 or slightly later. The first machine installed at Chemical Bank in New York may have been only a cash dispenser.

Gary Starkweather at Xerox PARC invents the laser printer by modifying a Xerox copier.

The Universal Product Code (UPC)—the familiar barcode—is accepted by a grocer’s trade association. It was developed by George J. Laurer of IBM.

The Federal Government’s antitrust suit against IBM goes to trial.

The complaint for the case U.S. v. IBM was filed in U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York on January 17, 1969 by the Justice Department. The suit alleged that IBM violated the Section 2 of the Sherman Act by monopolizing or attempting to monopolize the general purpose electronic digital computer system market, specifically computers designed primarily for business.

Wang introduces its VS minicomputer system, which becomes one of the most popular office systems, "inaugurating the concept of office automation."

Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston write Visicalc, the first spreadsheet program, for the Apple II. It helped dispel the notion that the Apple II was only a toy for hobbyists. The PC version of Visicalc was called "the first killer app" for the PC.

Mitchell Kapor, previously head of development at Visicorp, and Jonathan Sachs, with backing from Ben Rosen, found Lotus Development Corporation.

Kapor, who had been a teacher of Transcendental Meditation, named the company after 'The Lotus Position' or "Padmasana.''

Lotus Development Corporation releases Lotus 1-2-3. An integrated spreadsheet, graphics package, and database manger, it became the first "killer app" for the PC. In 1983 sales of 1-2-3 amounted to $54,000,000, making Lotus the largest independent software vendor in the world.

The IRS begins electronic tax filing (e-filing) to lower operating costs and paper usage, using the processing system developed in 1969 by the IRS,

The United States Internal Revenue Service begins programming and development of CADE (Customer Account Data Engine), first discussed in the IRS Modernization Plan of 2000.

"The original operational date was set at Nov 1st 2006. Programming and development began in 2003 but actual processing on the system was delayed until 2005. The system initially processed only 1040EZ tax returns, the simplest type of electronic tax returns. In 2006 the capacity was increased for the system to begin processing a limited number of more complex 1040 forms and other support forms. In 2007 the system began to process Schedule C forms and other more complex tax forms.

"Because the system is still unable to handle the full load of IRS tax returns, a hybrid approach is used by the IRS with the overwhelming majority of tax returns still being processed with the old system. Current processing loads and returns done by CADE are used for testing purposes to determine the systems functionality.

"The system, although beset by regular set backs due to funding, is expected to be fully operational by 2012" (Wikipedia article on Customer Account Data Engine, accessed 12-27-2008).

Anthropologists Gary Urton and Carrie Brezine publish "Khipu Accounting in Ancient Peru," Science 309 (2005) 1065 - 1067.

"Khipu [quipu] are knotted-string devices that were used for bureaucratic recording and communication in the Inka [Inca] Empire. We recently undertook a computer analysis of 21 khipu from the Inka administrative center of Puruchuco, on the central coast of Peru. Results indicate that this khipu archive exemplifies the way in which census and tribute data were synthesized, manipulated, and transferred between different accounting levels in the Inka administrative system" (Science).

"Researchers in the US believe they have come closer to solving a centuries-old mystery - by deciphering knotted string used by the ancient Incas.

"Experts say one bunch of knots appears to identify a city, marking the first intelligible word from the extinct South American civilisation.

"The coloured, knotted pieces of string,known as khipu, are believed to have been used for accounting information.

"The researchers say the finding could unlock the meaning of other khipu.

"Harvard University researchers Gary Urton and Carrie Brezine used computers to analyse 21 khipu.

"They found a three-knot pattern in some of the strings which they believe identifies the bunch as coming from the city of Puruchuco, the site of an Inca palace.

" 'We hypothesize that the arrangement of three figure-eight knots at the start of these khipu represented the place identifier, or toponym, Puruchuco,' they wrote in their report, published in the journal Science.

" 'We suggest that any khipu moving within the state administrative system bearing an initial arrangement of three figure-eight knots would have been immediately recognisable to Inca administrators as an account pertaining to the palace of Puruchuco.' (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4143968.stm, accessed 04-28-2009).