Tomorrow, on 21 November, we will celebrate Accounting Day, the day of specialists who govern all processes. Those in big science as well.

We searched the Net and found the following reminiscence of bookkeeping in the last century.

“In the 1980s, we ran payroll calculations of 700 employees using an abacus. Along with a basic salary, we calculated per-hour and piece-work payments, premium pays for holiday work and night work, and also various deductions like income taxes, taxes on childlessness, trade union dues, advance payments, alimonies, loans, insurances, overexpenditure of fuel and shortages. I wonder how it was possible.”

Thanks to JINR, its accountants could use computers at LIT in the 1980s. In the 1970s, they used desktop calculators. While in the 1950s and 1960s, as we believe, the main tool of accountants was a time-tested wooden abacus. Documentation was kept by hand or using a typewriter.

In the Museum-Study of Bruno Pontecorvo, there is a hand-written booklog where salary fund usage of the Laboratory of Nuclear Problems and the average salary structure of its employees in the 1980s were documented.

Happy Accounting Day, dear colleagues!

In the photo: JINR chief accountant A. E. Nazarenko (1991, JINR Photo Archive), the DLNP salary fund usage in the 1980s.