Word: erma
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...Helpful ERMA. The Bank of America aided by the Stanford Research Institute' started out by developing what it calls ERMA-Electronic Recording Machine Accounting. General Electric put the sys tem together, hitching components from National Cash Register Co. and Pitney-Bowes to its own computer, which it programed to process checks and do bank bookkeeping. To mark checks for use in the system, the Stanford researchers devised a set of stylized Arabic numerals* printed them in magnetic ink so that no matter how a check is folded or crumpled the numbers can still be read by ERMA. Subsequently...
...check with the depositor's code number must be put through an encoder where an operator inscribes it with its dollar amount before it is turned over to ERMA. From there on, a battery of machines do all the work. The machines sort and tabulate the checks, debit the accounts, print the statements when they are due, and put the checks in neat piles to be returned to the banks. ERMA also produces three daily records for the banks: a status report on the balance in each account, a journal of the most active accounts (noting large withdrawals that...
When the Bank of America began to phase in the first ERMA system two years ago, it cautiously kept its bookkeepers on the job to make sure ERMA did not err. But the system proved so efficient that Beise did away with the monitors...
...success of ERMA encouraged Beise to find other jobs for computers. The Bank of America's huge traveler-check and credit-card business will soon be handled entirely by optical scanners and IBM 7070 computers. Other IBM computers even check on the efficiency of the branches. Beise gets a report each month that compares the amount of business done by a branch with the number of workers employed. He is satisfied that the equipment is paying off, estimates that it saves 30% on the cost of handling checks alone...
California's Bank of America last week introduced its huge new electronic friend ERMA. which Bank President S. Clark Beise hailed as "the greatest advance in bookkeeping in the history of banking." Beise's ERMA (Electronic Recording Machine-Automatic), tended by nine operators, can handle all the bookkeeping for 50,000 checking accounts, takes the place of 50 workers. Operators merely feed in checks and deposit slips, punch dollar amounts on ERMA's keyboard. The checks and slips have customers' account numbers coded on them in magnetized ink; by reading these, ERMA keeps track of withdrawals...