Bound Volumes, Hometown History

March 27, 2025

110 YEARS AGO

The Wilber National Bank has, some weeks since, installed and has been operating one of the latest and most improved Burroughs statement machines – a device that approaches as near to a mechanical book keeper as is easily conceived, and is a marvel to all who have witnessed its operations. With it the bank has daily a statement sheet of each active account, posting and adding all deposits made and subtracting all checks paid by the bank upon the account and automatically recording the daily balance. This is all done mechanically, an operator manipulating the keys of the machine much as one writes with a typewriting machine. The machine is controlled by an electric motor and has all the latest appliances and attachments for ledger work. This implement, marvelous and almost human as are its capabilities, is of course not designed to displace the ledger and accounting system of the bank, but rather as an additional check against error, and to provide a quick and accurate method of supplying depositors statements of their accounts. At present, the Wilber National is posting and tabulating daily some 2,000 active accounts with the machine.

March, 1915

70 YEARS AGO

Doctors should lie to their cancer patients as a means of prolonging human life, a Baltimore psychiatrist yesterday advised the nation’s family physicians. People who say that they would want to know about it if they developed cancer are forgetting that they have two selves—one who wants to know about it and the other who does not, said Dr. Leo Bartemeier. He addressed the Academy of General Practice. The part of the personality that does not want to know should be protected by the physician, Dr. Bartemeier asserted because it supports the natural will to live. “Some people who are told about it may turn toward suicide via the drug or alcohol route,” the psychiatrist added.
Dr. Edward Weiss, an allergist from Temple University, Philadelphia, said this country has so many neurotics and so many allergic people that the two types of trouble overlap in many individuals. The neurotic factors in allergy are so frequent that the patient’s private life should be investigated, and in many cases they should be turned over to psychiatrists.

March, 1955

30 YEARS AGO

Less than a year after its start the State University College at Oneonta’s Center for Social Responsibility and Community is deemed a success. Backed by a $400,000 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the center’s first student volunteers began last September to identify and carry out projects they believe will make a difference to Oneonta and the people who live here. Since then SUCO students have engaged with the community in a wide variety of volunteer service activities. It is expected that students volunteering under the Center’s sponsorship will eventually participate in service projects at the state, national and international levels as well.

March 1995

20 YEARS AGO

Chronic wasting disease has been found in a white-tailed doe from a captive herd in nearby Oneida County. This is the first time the fatal malady has been detected in New York State. “This is not a public health threat, but it is a slow-moving animal health threat,” said Jessica Chittenden, NYS Agriculture & Markets spokeswoman. The Oneida County herd was quarantined and the remaining 16 animals will be killed and tested. The detection of the disease in New York is the first discovery of the ailment outside the Midwest or Rocky Mountain regions. Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a degenerative neurological illness.

March 2005