In France, the commercial houses are very conservative and are subject to the same government supervision as practiced in Germany. In one of the railroad companies, the Chemin de fer du Nord, they use the manibill system of billing (whereby each shipment is billed separately and manifolded on a form of seven sheets) which is the shortest form of billing known, but which has never been adopted by American railroads on account of the bulk of papers increasing too rapidly. The present American method is to put several shipments on a way bill for shipments to any given town, and when the goods arrive at the given town, the receiving stations make out separate freight bills for each shipment, copying the information from the blanket way bill made out at the forwarding station. Some of the American railroads are now adopting the special roll machine for car accountants' work, as shown in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1. Underwood Special Roll Machine for Car Accountants' Work ]
The French people do not, as a rule, form large companies like the Americans and Germans and English. There are a large number of small manufacturers and jobbers in France. The large department stores, like the Louvre, in Paris, are run on a strictly cash basis.
Neither the billing machines (book-writing machines) nor typewriters were originally intended for heavy manifolding work. The flat-bed billing machines were originally invented to write in books used for court records, sales books, etc. The book was to remain stationary and the machine was to travel over the books. The flat-bed machines are the only machines made for writing in bound books—the latter are being gradually replaced by loose-leaf books. A flat-bed machine for bound books is shown in Fig. 2.
Fig. 2. Flat-Bed Typewriter for Bound Books. _Elliott-Fisher Co._ ]
The typewriter was originally intended to write on one sheet of paper only. If extra copies were needed, a copying ribbon was used, and a wet copy taken in a letter-press book. In the evolution from bound books (official record and commercial) to loose sheets, the book typewriter was equipped with devices for holding loose sheets of paper—used alone or in connection with books. In the evolution from letter-press copies to carbon copies, the typewriter was equipped with hard-rubber and brass platens for taking from one to twenty-five copies, and in some cases even more, with extremely thin paper and carbon paper.