The Comptometer at Renault/France

by Marie-Louise Teulade

One morning, I remember, it was on February 14th, 1935.

I was sixteen and a half years old and for the first time, I was going to look for a job. I was a little bit distressed because I did not know that world, and after a one hour trip, I presented at the recruting office of the cars manufacturer Régie Renault in Billancourt, France.

There were many people, which like me, waiting and hoping to be employed, because at that time, work was rare. Finally after a meeting and a medical examination, the staff manager hires me as an apprentice winder at 0,50 franc per hour.

Régie Renault Factories, in Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris, France, around 1960

I was told to go to Workshop 310, where the dynamos were manufactured. I was introduced to my section leader which explained my future work, consisting of putting 28 small copper plates in a kind of mould, seperated by 28 mica layers.

It was a tiresome and repetitive work which left much time for the imagination.

I waited impatiently for my 18th birthday to become eligible for a job in the offices. Fortunately, working conditions were good and the people very nice. I have no regrets for this period of my life.

At school
Finally I am 18 years old. It should be said that during this period, I had gotten information to obtain a change, via my uncle, who worked with the service of the wages (payroll dept). I learned that if I knew how to use a Comptometer, his head of department would hire me. I decided to quit my job and to register, thanks to my parents, at a Comptometer School in Paris, rue de Washington.

The director was Mr. Gould. It was a very pleasant school with a great atmosphere. It was located close to the Arc de Triomphe, and from high up on the terrace, we had a superb view of Paris. I spent two months there when Mr. Monnet, head of department of the Wages at Renault, telephoned to Mr. Gould to ask him if I was ready to work on Comptometer. After his favourable opinion, Mr. Monnet meet with me the following day, February 18th, 1937, to sign a contract as Comptometer operator with wages of 950 francs.

First experience as a Comptometer operator
Mr Monnet introduced to me to my new boss, Mrs. Pointe, who was in charge of about fifteen Comptometer operators. The Comptometers we used had been purchased by Renault in 1922 .

I bonded immediately with my new colleagues, who as a whole, were older than me. On the other hand the office was not particularly pleasant place to work. It was next to the forging mills and the foundries which brought much miasmas to us, mainly the noise, dust, the ashes in the eyes, etc...

A hundred people worked in this office.

The Wages Department in 1938.

The department of Wages was only taking care of the payroll for hourly workers. Using our Comptometers, we calculated each worker's gross salary following the production which it had made. This amount was entered with red pencil ink on a master payroll by another employee. To this was added any overtime, the premiums, and deducted whatever social contributions, the installments, etc. Once the payrolls were filled, they were attached together temporarily and the Comptometer operators were charged to check them.

In 1938, they were 35 000 workers, and as they were paid every two weeks, we had 70 000 pays to check each month. Work thus did not miss.

The War time
Two years later, war was declared with Germany. This day I believed that the walls were going to burst. All the workers wanted to get their pay before leaving for the army. That lasted several days, then the office found its calms with new heads, because the mobilized personnel had to be replaced.

This "Phoney War" (as it was called, because one had the impression that nothing was happening) lasted until May 10, 1940, when the Germans crossed the Belgian border, and then the French border.

On June 10th, 1940 the Renault Factories are evacuated (it is the “exodus”), on June 14th, 1940 the German were in Paris. Paris without its inhabitants, the majority of them were on the roads of France, leaving everything behind.

On June 17, 1940, Maréchal Pétain asks for an armistice which is signed on June 25th, 1940 in Rethonde, like that of 1918. Then another period, the sad occupation time started.

In September the Renault factories are seized by the German authorities and the personnel is requisitioned. Everyday, with the radio at low level, we listened to "Ici Londres". It was the voice of General de Gaulle who showed the sign of better days to us.

Our offices, after the bombing, in 1943. See the two Comptometer embedded in the table

During the winter 1942 which was very cold, the factory was bombed by the Royal Air Force on March 3rd, causing many deaths in the city (500). Almost all the buildings of the factory were destroyed, so Renault decided to rebuild. Our office, not existing anymore, was rebuilt with spare material and with a brazier to heat us, without good results.

During the bombing we had lost the majority of our Comptometers. Mine was intact, I have been lucky to be able to use it until my retirement, in December 1983. I still have today, as you can see below

My Comptometer, s/n J300468 with 10 columns

In April 1943, a second bombing destroyed again some of the remaining buildings and Comptometers. These were replaced with used Burroughs or Continental calculators, which one found at that time. Some of my collegues, working with other calculators, were asking me to multiply by two the time I was using to perform my work, because they could not do it as fast as me and my Comptometer!

Finally the Americans landed at Normandy on June 6th, 1944 and with them the hope to see the end of this war approached day after day.

When the tanks of General Leclerc, together with the ones of General Patton arrived to Paris in August 44, it was totally crazy. All the Parisians went down in the street to welcome them with enthusiasm. We dreamed of this day for such a long time. Gradually everything came back to normal. The war prisoners returned and the factories went back to work. Nine more months were necessary before peace was signed on May 8th, 1945. In our office, the activity resumed. Following the bombing, we had moved to another building where we had a clean and more comfortable office. I had become responsible for the section of the calculators, we were not more that five comptometer operators, the others had various machines.

In 1947, computers arrived at Régie Renault and the service of wages was the first to benefit of this progress, when first computer IBM was installed. We named it "Anatole", that changed all the organization of work, the calculator became tabulators and I remained with the Comptometer operators to take care of the accounting of the wages, i.e. calculation of the social contributions, declarations to the Social security, the income tax returns, the relationship with the banks for the transfers of wages etc... A few years later it was the optical character reading which replaced the punch card, which did not change anything with my work.

In the Sixties
In 1964, the company computerized the pay of the monthly personnel and I inherited the accounting part with the related personnel.

During all these years the Régie Renault had organized and built several factories (Cléry, Flins, Cléon, Sandouville, etc) for which I began wages accounting.

In the Seventies
In 1973, I was attached to the accounting department, to my usual work was added all the countable charges, general ledger as well as cost accounting. That lasted until 1978, when the controller did not want to pay any more of the personnel which worked for all the factories. I was thus attached to the Department of the Personnel and the Social Relations, which worked for the whole of the Renault Factories, today more than 200 000 people. I created the wages platform. It is there that all the factories sent the documents enabling me to calculate the amount of the checks to be paid to each organization like the banks to carry out the wire transfers with the personnel. All payrolls (195 000 in 1983) and accounting books were made here. At that time I was the only one still using a Comptometer in the company !

It is in this service that I finished my career on December 31, 1983 after 49 years of service, without missing one day, having had the chance of good health, just like my Comptometer which I used without one failure during these long years.

Although my Comptometer was registered in the Historical Inventory of Renault, to my great pleasure I received it as a gift when I left the company.

June 2006, my Comptometer and me

I finished my life at Renault as manager responsible for wages accountancy and I find my course quite succesfull, after having started like apprentice winder before becoming a Comptometer operator.

Today I am retired, I take advantage of it to travel in the whole world, including three visits in the USA. I also like to receive my family and my friends around a good dinner. Now I am 88 years old and I live peacefully with my junior sister, hoping to finish my life in greatest serenity, it is all the wish that I make.

Marie-Louise Teulade
December 2006
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