Cash and computers

Manukau City Council’s first computer in 1967.

Bruce Ringer

DC Day, 10th July 1967, the day New Zealand changed from pounds shillings and pence to dollars and cents, was also the day Manukau City Council entered the computer age.

On that day Manukau City Council's brand new £35,000 National Cash Register Company computer became fully operational. The state-of-the-art NCR500 weighed in at more than half a ton, came with two tons of magnetic programming cards, and was housed in a specially built, fire-proof, smoke-free room at the Council's offices in Hall Road, Manurewa.

The computer was used to process the rates paperwork, payrolls and electoral rolls. It could do the work of three full-time accountants in just nine hours a month.

'It had to come', said the City Treasurer, Braden Sharkey. 'Other councils have begun to use computers for the accounting work and we will find plenty for it to do.'

The NCR500 served the city for just over eight years. In October 1975 it was replaced by a leased $150,000 Burroughs Wellcome B1726.

For more information: see Manukau’s Journey.

Publication record: first published in Connexions, no. 82, October 2005, p. 4. Revised for publication on the Manukau Libraries website in September 2009.

Copyright © Manukau Libraries. This text may be freely used for the purposes of private study or research and for non-commercial publication provided that the author and Manukau Libraries are duly acknowledged.