How to improve meetings

Reader Robert Ayres relates the following:

Heard about this at General Electric's Missile and Space Division, back in the 60s. (I did not actually see it in use.)

As you enter the meeting room, you privately enter your annual salary (thousands) on the telephone dial (pad). A little computer (a one-off then, a PDA now) continually computes the total running-cost of the
meeting, in terms of (sum salaries) meeting-duration.

So the chair can at any time announce, "OK guys, we've spent $1500 of the company's money, have we reached any conclusions?"

For other ideas, see my earlier post.