Show Skates and Roller Chairs Help Speed M Messages as Big Ben Strikes s Twelve 3 r r i L 44 ce pi 1 45 4 4 WINo nm n Helen Davidson 1715 Seventh East street and RO Roy Paul tI Center street They skate while r fi I Four hundred wor words s a minute minute- messages an hour hour are are whizzing through Western Union wires when the county building clock strikes noon Not for the beat bent of a second or oran oran oran an eyelash flicker do the words cease their machine gun tempo On the Utah Oil and Refining company building eighth floor Ioor girls and boys on on roller skates rush messages messages mes rues sages from printers to spindles to hooks to routing desks and tub tubes s. s The average office drag time of delivering messages from one point of the room to another used to be two minutes By roller skates its it's 27 seconds officials say Pneumatic Tubes Pneumatic tubes shoot messages from the eighth floor quarters down beneath street pavement up Main street to the town up office Under the hurrying feet o of pedestrians pedestrians pedestrians flash words an operator put on a machine in New York Paris Shanghai and that a girl on roller skates started on their final round Thirteen clocks from room walls remind workers of speed Multiplex Multiplex Multiplex Multi Multi- plex printers telegraph keys dynamos dynamos dynamos dy dy- dy- dy namos bearing ball-bearing skate wheels clatter and end grind and whine Even the chairs occupied by other workers work work- ers have rollers on with which to I skid from point to point Accuracy First Accuracy First signs decorate the walls valls to impress Morse code operators operators operators op op- op- op automatic printer operators operators operators opera opera- tors service clerks file clerks roUtine routine routine rou rou- tine aids the tho skaters telephone ii jl f viiri i Farrel Naish East First South street punches I out messages r clerks supervisors wire chief chie automatic automatic auto auto- auto I matic chief assistant chief operator and traffic manager The Salt Lake City office averages aver aver- ages iges messages an hour day shift shUt md nd night shift The average carries 30 words One of the routing aids a man I can at full speed snatch a message from tram a n. hook sweep down the room flash tho the paper into a time puncher on the fly and snap it on another hook in less than 20 seconds And all this is going on while the city's population is eating lunch |