Word: scribe
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...Even when we use the electronic calculator we are indebted to the long-forgotten Eastern merchant who first adapted number signs to the layout of the abacus. His predecessor, the temple scribe who gave each pebble a number value ten times as great when moved one groove to the left, first gave ordinary men a clear idea of the use of a fixed base in mathematics. The electronic calculator of today still makes use of a fixed base, though it commonly employs a base of two instead of ten . . . All our modern aids to calculation are the rewards of work...
...half a century, Americans in Paris -sophisticates and innocents alike-have felt the same way about the American Express office. To them, the grimy faced, flatiron-shaped building at 11 Rue Scribe, across the street from the Opera, has been their home away from home. It has handled their mail (750,000 pieces a year, addressed simply c/o American Express, Paris), cashed their checks, even furnished them with "jeunes filles de bonne famille" for babysitters. Through its portals as many as 10,000 Americans have thronged each day in search of information, messages or waiting friends...
Supermodern Island. Last week progress and change came to 11 Rue Scribe. A gang of builders invaded the old structure, gutted the ground floor and prepared to rebuild the entire six floors. Only the outside will remain the same. France's "Law on Historic Monuments" jealously prohibits tampering with the building's traditional façade; city officials refused even to let American Express sandblast its grimy exterior lest this make the nearby grimy Opéra look even dirtier...
When the rebuilders finish April 15, the inside of 11 Rue Scribe will be a supermodern island of U.S. business efficiency in the old world. Gone will be the curlicued wrought iron balustrades, the clutter of desks on the ground floor, the buckety old elevators so useful to a lonely tourist trying to strike up an acquaintanceship with a pretty Iowa schoolmarm. In their place will be $750,000 worth of electronic gadgets, air conditioning, an escalator and labor-saving business machines. Last week, as traditionalists complained, American Express President Ralph T. Reed explained: "Travel has become big business...
Earlier, the Divinity School student publication, The Scribe, had condemned the psychology test plan as a "trend toward conformity." The Scribe's editor, John Mr. Coffee, charged that the tests "would indicate that many who now are able to become theological students are 'maladjusted,' and hence unfit for the ministry...