The future arrives – on the fourth floor…
It’s Sunday 22 October 1961 and Martins takes delivery at Clearing Department, 68 LOMBARD STREET London, of the latest “reader/sorter” technology which will revolutionise the way customers’ vouchers are sorted into order for processing to their accounts. It will still be many years before the widespread use of customer account numbers will begin to ease the work of the clearing banks, and between now and then a lot of work will still need to be done. (The government will eventually warn banks that by the time of DECIMALISATION in 1971, all branch accounting procedures must be computerised). This however is the first real attempt to speed up the clearing of cheques, and in fact Martins achieves another FIRST, when on 25 April 1963, director Sir John Nicholson makes the following announcement to assembled staff and national newspaper editors in the board room at 68 Lombard Street:	The busy work of Clearing Department Image: Martins Bank Archive
“I can now announce that within the last two weeks, we have introduced a new operational system which is a major step forward in clearing operations for cheques on a country-wide basis, and we understand we are the first to operate such a system outside the USA. We are working on developments to marry the current account and the clearing operations in order to provide an integrated accounting system in which we can see, for the future, advantages to our customers, as well as to ourselves”
No lie-in… The future arrives on the fourth floor, and provides quite a spectacle for anyone who happens to be walking down Lombard Street on this particular October Sunday Morning. Shown here for the first time are several shots of the action showing just how mammoth a task it is to deliver an IBM Reader Sorter.
Is that an enormous upright piano on a crane? (You hum it, I’ll play it)…		The machine heads towards a specially constructed ramp atop the scaffolding.
At this point we can only imagine everyone looking through their fingers		Phew – inside the building at last, and ready to slide down the ramp
Easy does it. The reader/sorter is worth thousands, so don’t drop it		Parts one and two, side by side, and ready to be joined together for years of happy sorting.
Images © Ron Hindle Estate
Huge sighs of relief as cheques are finally read and sorted – exactly what it says on the tin…	The two halves of Martins’ computer operation are coming closer, but not yet completely, together. The LIVERPOOL COMPUTER CENTRE and a London Branch – South Audley Street are experimenting with processing the day’s work of branches using PEGASUS. Lombard Street Clearing Department uses the IBM Reader Sorter to speed up its clearing operations, and our new and state of the art LONDON COMPUTER CENTRE will arrive in 1966. For such a determined foray into the future, the arrival of the IBM Reader Sorter technology is given a rather low-key mention in Martins Bank Magazine under “London District News”. Perhaps this serves to remind everyone that Martins’ Head Office is in Liverpool, and that London is like any other outpost of the bank!
London District News Simultaneously with last year's move into computer operation, though for the time being it is a separate exercise, the Bank has installed its first automatic cheque sorter in the Clearing Department in London. This machine can read for itself the identity of the branches on which cheques are drawn and sorts the cheques accordingly. It is unable to read ordinary printed matter, however, and consequently the branch code numbers (and later on other data) have to be printed in special characters using a magnetisable ink. In due course the cheque sorters will join up with the computer to provide a fully automatic system of accounting. Before this can be done it will be necessary to encode the account identity and the amount in the special characters referred to. When this can be provided the cheque sorters will be able to read and pass to a computer all the information that is needed for the maintenance of accounts.
Putting the machine through its paces is clearing staff member Miss Valerie Blunden	An amazing 950 cheques per minute are read and sorted at an incredible speed of 15mph!
Images: Martins Bank Archive
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