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Many a bright stenographer at the 28th Annual National Business Show in Grand Central Palace, Manhattan, last week, demanded demonstrations of the newest office mechanisms. Polite salesmen responded by giving a performance of the self-feeding typewriter, more like a player piano than a desk machine, with characters for any language except Hebrew and Chinese. Others displayed an attachment that recorded telephone messages which came while the boss was out, spoke them to him in dulcet tones on his return. Dictaphones, check writers, letter openers and folders indicated that the secretary of the future may need only to be decorative.

A filing system for thousands of cards was operated by one person with pulleys and buttons. A multigraphing machine imitated anyone's handwriting. A desk had a radio in the drawer.

The business of making these machines and office equipment has reached impressive proportions. International Business Machines Corp., National Cash Register Co. and Burroughs Adding Machine Co. each list their assets at over $50,000,000.

While the show was on, Thomas John Watson, cattle fancier and president of International Business Machines, delivered an address at Lafayette College on Founder's Day. This is not a "machine age," said he, but a "man age" and "holds forth far greater opportunities for the young man . . . than at any other time in our history."

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