In my favorite local restaurant, they can see their daily sales in real time on their handheld devices. They can see current daily, weekly and monthly sales immediately. One hundred years ago in Kalamazoo, totaling sales was a much bigger and slower task. Here’s a story told to me by Tom Johnson, who spent his career working in Upjohn finance groups.

During W.E.Upjohn’s tenure as leader of The Upjohn Company, he wanted to know the total monthly product sales on the last day of each month. To achieve that, the books for sales had to be closed on the 26th, so a group of clerks could add up all the sales from the large number of paper invoices. It literally took days for them to add up all the sales for one month.

From 1924 onwards, these clerks used a mechanical adding machine called a Comptometer, made by the Felt and Tarrant Mfg. Co. of Chicago. Upjohn had quite a number of these adding machines because they had a large business of pharmaceutical sales by then. The machines were not light as they were made of steel.

Even though W.E.Upjohn died in the 1930s, closing of monthly sales on the 26th lasted into the 1980s. By that time, nobody knew why the books closed on the 26th. It had always been done that way and it had become an unbreakable habit. However, it was causing inventory problems, because all the Upjohn distribution centers knew if they ordered after the 26th, they could delay being billed by an entire month. This month-end rush of orders often resulted in product outages.

Tom wanted to fix the problems caused by closing the month on the 26th. He asked around the finance department but nobody in the 1980s knew why it was on the 26th. Finally he found one single person, an old-timer, who knew the story of why the 26th of the month was used. Tom proposed to management they could solve inventory problems and smooth out sales figures by moving the close to the last day of the month. After all, computers could produce a monthly sales report in minutes on the last day. Of course, change can be very hard, but Tom kept pushing it and eventually a leadership edict was issued that sales would close on the last day of the month.

There was one Upjohn Comptometer kept from the early days, passed down the generations of finance officers. Tom gave it to me in February 2026 and I’ve included photos of it below. It could be one-hundred years old. Note the 1930’s-era photo of the Upjohn Company Kalamazoo Office showing four of these machines on desks.

Thank you Tom for the story and the Comptometer!