A limited number of copies of the AMERICAN DIGEST OF BUSINESS MACHINES (1924) is available.  Use the link on the home page to find out how to get your copy.

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Billing Machines

Billing machines of the Moon-Hopkins design are the most common as antiques, although many models of Burroughs machines were sold as billing machines by the incorporation of unique paper handling carriages. As an example, the Burroughs typewriter marketed before WWII was sold as a billing machine toward the end of its production life by the addition of many carriage features.

Once again, the Moon-Hopkins machine was invented by another company and purchased by Burroughs, who continued to improve and enhance the machine for decades. 

A very successful machine, the Moon, as it was called at Burroughs, combined a typewriter with the bookkeeping (adding machine) function to create a true bookkeeping machine.  The machine was quite large and good-sized businesses might have two or three of the machines in-house to do the accounting work of the enterprise.

One interesting fact about the Moon, you may have heard of the saying, “It’s all done with mirrors.”  The Moon machine actually had mirrors for the operator to use to see the printing because the actual printing on the documents (statements, checks, etc.) was not visible to the operator otherwise.

Class 7 – (Series M, Type 70) Moon-Hopkins type machines with typewriter keyboard.  These machines were produced for many years by Burroughs after they purchased the Moon-Hopkins Billing Machine Company.

Date range -- 1923-1957

Original Price -- $650

Today’s Value -- $100-$300

Moon-Hopkins design