In a long cFam text thread with various topics, the missing adding machine came up. Wait. what? There is an adding machine at Hoton Lake?

Okay, I did not take it although I would be a prime candidate for being an adding machine bandit. When I was a little kid, my banker dad used to schlep adding machines home from the bank from time to time. Why? Because he knew I LOVED to play with them. I can’t really remember what I did with them, added numbers I guess, but they were fun. I think it was partly that they were REAL things that I could play with, not just toys.

Later on when I was a teenager and early 20-something, I worked at “your Tempo store” in Sault Ste. Siberia. I was primarily a cashier (which I LOVED) but I also worked in the “office” sometimes, where one of my tasks if I had the early shift was to balance the previous day’s deposit. That required various pieces of equipment, including an adding machine! Tappity tappity ching (something like that). So much fun.

I hope the Hoton Lake adding machine is found because I think it is an important artifact to keep. Not too many years after I left Tempo for good (and Tempo is long gone now), the GG and I got an Apple II+, onto which we could load (via floppy disc) a program called Visicalc. It basically allowed me to do what adding machines do and much much much more. Alas, it wasn’t all that useful at the time. But then our computer evolved into a MacPlus and Visicalc evolved into Excel! I used Excel to computerize more than a few non-profit orgs plus I use it at work ALL THE TIME.

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