Going computerized in the 1980s had a different meaning than it does today. Anyone old enough to have been in an office setting back then remembers green bar paper, fixed fonts and the rickety sounding printers slowly cranking out print, running laboriously back and forth across the paper. There was no Internet and even e-mail had quite a few limitations that have long since disappeared.

But Norris Sales Company Inc., Plymouth Meeting, Pa., recently had reason to harken back to those days, when the company reached its one-millionth transaction since going computerized with their sales and rental records in 1989.

At 3:07 on the afternoon of May 14, Norris Sales/Rental Agent Joe Smith entered the company’s one-millionth computerized transaction for its Plymouth Meeting location. Norris Sales also has a location in Sicklerville, N.J., but that facility has separate records.

Since computer technology is now such a far cry from what was available in the 1980s, everyone in the Plymouth Meeting location was aware that this unique milestone was coming up. Obviously, a company that was founded in 1956 had reached its actual one-millionth transaction years ago, but paper-and-ink records are much harder to search through, and no one knew exactly when that had happened.

Employees tried to guess when the transaction would ring up, some thinking it would take a few days longer than it actually did.

The transaction, when it came, involved Miller Brothers Electrical Contractors, located in Conshohocken, Pa. A longtime customer, Miller Brothers put in an order to rent a Sullivan Palatek Towable air compressor, just as they have been placing orders with Norris since 1990.

Once the order had been entered in the system and recognized as order one million, Norris Sale Company invited Harry and Mike Miller to come out to see them and receive a prize.

When they arrived to pick up their rental order, the Millers were greeted by Company President Don Zajick and Vice President Karen Zajick as well as their Sales/Rental Agent Joe Smith, who were there to present them with a free rental of the machine and a little bit of fanfare to commemorate the milestone.

Both men were very pleased to receive the free rental from their friends at Norris Sales, and Norris staff was delighted to recognize friends that had been with them for about as long as the computerized system has been.

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