Invention Of Cash Register

The cash register was invented in 1879 by bar-owner James Ritty. Its origins lie in light-fingered bar staff, a stress-relieving European holiday and a maritime invention that was designed to count the revolutions of a ship's propeller.

During the 1870s James Ritty (USA) realized that he had a problem. He was running a bar in his home town of Dayton, Ohio, but although the bar was popular and usually busy, Ritty was not making the level of profit he expected. He suspected his bartenders of stealing from him, an easy thing to do given that cash was kept in open boxes and sales were listed (if at all) in an account book by the bartenders themselves. Depressed by this, in 1878 Ritty decided to take a holiday to Europe. He visited the engine room of the steamship en route, noticed a machine that counted the revolutions of the propeller shaft, and immediately began thinking about how he could use this idea to record sales in his bar. He became so enthusiastic about the idea that he curtailed his holiday and returned home to design a cash register with his brother John.

Their first machine (pictured above), patented the following year, comprised a circular dial and a keyboard; bartenders entered the amount of each sale and the dial displayed a running total, which the manager could check at the end of the day. Crucially, the "Incorruptible Cashier", as it was known, had a loud bell that alerted the manager every time a sale was made. In 1883, James Ritty and John Birch (USA) patented an improved version, similar to a modern cash register, which had tabs that sprang up to indicate the amount, rather than a dial.

Having succeeded in inventing the cash register, Ritty failed to make a commercial success of it - until one of his few customers, local businessman John H. Patterson (USA), was so impressed with the effect the registers had on his own business that he bought a controlling stake in Ritty's company. Patterson hadn't realized that Ritty's company was running at a loss, but the deal was done. Determined to make a success of it, Patterson renamed the company the National Cash Register Co. (now better known as NCR Corp.) and went on to become a multi-millionaire.

Source - The Book Of Invention by Ian Harrison