25 Aug
2011
25 Aug
'11
7:01 a.m.
On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 2:48 AM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
I have a good friend who is an accountant. I've seen her do this many
times, then refer back to the printed tape on occasion during the course of
a job. And she's a very "high-tech" accountant, too.
Those tools do still have legitimate places.
Most of the people I know who own or run their own business and use outside
accounting all use printing calculators. They tally up their number and
throw the receipts the accountant wants into an envelope along with the
printout of their calculations. Even though it's all computerized, I think
if something goes wrong it's much faster for the accountant to just check
the tape instead of going through all of the receipts they need to check.
My dad ran his own business and was a total calculator geek. In the early
80's he had a rechargeable desktop that had a thermal printer and a weird
rubberized keypad - not membrane but a single rubber sheet over mechanical
switches. I think it was to make it "ruggedized" but it was more modern
looking than rugged - it was orange-ish yellow to boot.
He also had an incredibly cool Sharp plotting calculator that I'm lucky
enough to still have. Damn hard to find new pens for it, though.