If you bought anything from my dad's furniture store, you got a hand written receipt, along with a printed slip from the adding machine with all the additions for all you bought and taxes. Part of that was my job, even when I was in the single digits in age. At around 9 years old, I helped to count down, and also do the books ( big ledger books ) where payments were written manually and then added up. I will take a photo one day of them, as I still have them here. When you finally paid off your bill, all of those previous totals are added up on the machine, and you get a final sale receipt, as well as a copy of the tape. and we X'ed out that page in the book. All of the figuring was done by me at the final payment if I wasn't in school. Finishing the books at the end of the month, and year were also my duties. We did have an electronic calculator with tape that we used to count down the day and the week for speed but my grandfather didn't really trust it and always had us double check on the old lever action. He was born in the 1800s, so I can understand. lol

The adding machines, we had two, were both sort of old. The one that was used most by me, and most of us was the really old Burroughs machine. The other one was my Grandmother's and she was particular about it, since it was newer. We didn't have a cash register. Most of the stores in town had the old cash registers that were mechanical , and some lever operated like the adding machines we had. I think maybe two stores had electric ones, and that was the Western Auto, and maybe the Belk's Department Store.

Anyway, here is the old machine.  If this isn't exactly it, it is damn close.



This was my grandmother's "new" machine.