Hail, the Conquering Button

In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley created a repulsively antiseptic future world in which everything was done scientifically by push buttons and chemistry. Last week, as over 100,000 people trooped through Manhattan's Grand Central Palace at the National Business Show, first since 1941, it appeared that the pushbutton world had already closed in on businessmen.

Front-line lieutenants of the advancing buttons proudly manipulated some 3,000 machines, the last word in gadgets to count, add, substract, multiply, divide, duplicate (or do all six at once), type in any of 51 languages, stamp and address envelopes, open letters, translate, record, broadcast on private networks, and, finally, erase spotlessly and indefatigably. Showstoppers :

P: A billing machine which takes a roll of blank paper, perforates it, cuts it to size, prints forms in two colors, prints the amounts of the bills, addresses them, and stacks them in neat piles, has every bill up to date at month's end, including sales , on the last day.

P: A typewriter which can write in English, Russian or Assyrian Cuneiform--for businesslike archeologists.

P: A portable radio typewriter which can transmit copies of what is being typed, while it is being typed, to one or more offices thousands of miles away.

P: A machine which can do 100 six-digit multiplications in a minute through a box in which there are no movable parts (the answer to the answers: 396 electronic tubes).

P: A book-sized wireless portable radio receiver through which a strolling listener, by a flick of a switch, can hear a speaker's words translated into any of four languages. Explanation: the speaker's words are radioed to translators, then the translations are rebroadcast on four different wave lengths.

But the most spine-chilling gadget of all--which was demonstrated at the maker's own showrooms farther downtown--was Remington Rand's complete television system for factory use. Called the "Vericon," it will permit a corporation president to see what is going on in any office by a mere flick of the switch.

For its backers, the push-button world apparently held no terrors. Said a representative of International Business Machines (whose motto is "Think!"): "Why, it's a great era for the individual worker. Just think, instead of just taking dictation, a secretary can now serve her boss as accountant, paymaster, inventory expert, and Lord only knows what else."

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