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Show ae Story Behind The Bank Check . . . T ,i5 AND VALENTINES "Tv 28 CENTURIES 5 ? ASg checks 4 K according to the ex- Used in one form or k far back as the 7th or ' es BC, but the world ;enturi decade for 5 m be written on the shell foiled egg! Properly en-"it en-"it was cashed with no ' it its ful1 amount at lv :!e branch of the Canadian est 'i Commerce. Here in the - eckshave been written in lipstick on a handkerchief, on ciragette paper, on calling cards, envelopes, fragile valentines and even on stell plate so tough that it had to be enrodsed with a blow torch. Perhaps to encourage more normal check-writing habits, banks have gone so far as to provide left-handed checkbooks for their southpaw customers. According to conservative estimates, esti-mates, five billion checks, normal or egg-shaped, left-handed or right-handed, are written each year in the United States that's almost 14 million a day and, since these checks cover 90 per cent' of all the exchange money in this country, one is bound to enter your life whether or not you write checks yourself. Pictures would show the great contrast between bank procedure of early days, as depicted in a drawing of a Fifteenth Century Italian bank, and modern banking practice with the aid of the IBM proof machine. In fact, the word "bank" has its origin in the Italian "banca" meaning the bench, table or counter used by money changers chang-ers in places of business Today's proof machines prove, sort, list and endorse your check in one simple, time-saving operation. This wizard even keeps its eyes on the operator to reduce possible errors from that direction. A light flashes when a receptacle is filled with checks; another indicates an exhausted ex-hausted adding tape; and still an other light gently reminds the operator op-erator she's neglected to drop the check into the machine after listing list-ing it! And if the total of a deposit de-posit slip does not jibe with the total of the individual checks listed, list-ed, this machine locks and stubbornly stub-bornly refuses to be a partner to someone else's incorrect addition. Since checks play such a vital part in our economic life, the American Banking Association has put up some signposts to guide the checkwriter. Legible writing helps, of course, and for your own protection amounts should be written as close as possible to the . left hand margins of the appropriate appro-priate lines. If there's a difference between the check amount in words and the amount written in figures, it is the amount in words that fixes the amount of the check. Another tip: if you should receive a check with your name spelled incorrectly, endorse it exactly as spelled then add your official signature. |