accounting machine

accounting machine

An early office machine used to compute and prepare invoices and payroll, etc., using magnetic stripe ledger cards or punch cards.

Accounting Machine System
The IBM accounting machine (left), keypunch and sorter (right) were the main ingredients of a punched-card data processing system up until the late 1960s. After keypunching, the cards were sorted into account number sequence, and the accounting machine printed the details and accumulated the totals. (Image courtesy of IBM.)