Dorr Felt's Comptometer, patented in Chicago in 1887, was a key-driven calculator fast enough that firms hired entire floors of trained operators — overwhelmingly women, certified by dedicated Comptometer schools that taught touch operation at speed. Electronic calculators and mainframe computers erased the trade in the 1960s and 70s, taking one of the era's largest skilled office occupations for women with it.
Comptometer operator no longer exists as a living trade. Here is what erased it, and which profession took on the work.
1494 – 1854
Counting-houses of trade and empire
Double entry followed trade north and out to sea. The Dutch East India Company, founded in 1602 and the first company with publicly traded shares, ran a bookkeeping operation spanning hemispheres; London's counting-houses multiplied with empire and industry. After the South Sea Bubble burst in 1720, Parliament turned to an accountant, Charles Snell, for an expert opinion on a broker's books — an early forensic audit — and Josiah Wedgwood's 1772 cost analysis showed manufacturers what their ledgers could tell them about price and profit.
What else was happening then
1854
The chartered accountant is born
Queen Victoria grants a royal charter to the Society of Accountants in Edinburgh, with Glasgow's institute following the same year — the first professional accounting bodies of the modern type, whose members alone could call themselves "chartered accountants." England and Wales followed with the ICAEW's charter in 1880.
1896
New York creates the CPA
New York State passes the first law establishing the title "certified public accountant," awarded by examination. Other states copy it over the following decades, and in 1899 Christine Ross of New York becomes the first woman to earn the credential.
1933
The audit becomes law
After the 1929 crash, the US Securities Act of 1933 and Exchange Act of 1934 require listed companies to file financial statements audited by independent accountants, policed by the new Securities and Exchange Commission. The audit stops being a service some shareholders buy and becomes a legal institution.
1979
VisiCalc puts the ledger on a screen
Dan Bricklin, a Harvard MBA student watching a professor correct a blackboard of figures cell by cell, builds the first electronic spreadsheet with programmer Bob Frankston. VisiCalc becomes the Apple II's killer application and recalculates in seconds what took a clerk all night.
Where that work lives now
The keeper of the books: heir to a craft so old it invented writing itself, now negotiating with the software built to automate it.
🧾 Accountant →