The Story of National Cash Register (NCR)

Before cash registers entered common use, business owners had no way to reliably track how much money entered and left a store’s cash box. Businesses grew swiftly during the Gilded Age, which occurred between the end of the American Civil War and 1900. This rapid growth caused businesses to hire staff in a rushed manner without much vetting, which resulted in a scourge of employee theft across the business community (1). The spread of shoplifting and the resulting damage to businesses demanded a solution. The solution came in the form of a new invention called the cash register.

James Jacob Ritty was a pub owner in Dayton, Ohio (2). He was upset by thefts by employees of his saloon, which was not helped by the fact that records were kept on simple slips of paper (3). The unreliability of this measurement system meant that he sought a better way to keep track of his finances and keep staff in his store accountable.

The first ideas for a money measurement tool came while Ritty was vacationing in 1879 (4). This breakthrough moment came when he observed a mechanism on a ship tracking the number of rotations the propeller made (5). Observing the rotary tracker moved him to imagine a similar mechanism counting money. Ritty’s novel thought process was associating the revolutions of a machine with precise amounts of money entering and leaving a space (6).

James Jacob Ritty and his brother John, a skilled machinist, embarked on their journey to assemble the first cash register (7) (8). This register had a circular interface as well as keys which could be entered in nickel amounts, and dollar totals which ranged between $1 and $9 (9). The first machine had a lockable box, as well as an automatic accounting tool similar in function to a ship’s propeller tracker (10). This machine was branded as, “Ritty’s Incorruptible Cashier” (11).

Soon, the novel business and its product encountered issues. By 1881, James Ritty faced a challenge in raising funds to continue experimenting (12). The intellectual property for the cash register as well as its business entity were sold to the National Manufacturing Company for $1,000, or $30,621 in 2024 dollars, that same year (13) (14).

One of Ritty’s early customers was named John Henry Patterson (15). Patterson purchased two Ritty registers to help with accounting at his coal business in 1882 (16). He and his brother Frank sold coal in Coalton, Ohio, 108 miles/174 kilometers southeast of Dayton (17). The positive effects the two new cash registers had on the business were immediate. The Patterson brothers saw their coal-selling fortunes swiftly change. The Pattersons’ coal business reduced its debt to $3,000 from $16,000, and made a profit of $5,000, all in the first six months of owning the machines (18). Adjusted to 2024 dollars, the debt had shrunk to $91,862 from $489,933, and the profit was $153,104 (19).

At age 41, John Henry Patterson purchased the National Manufacturing Company of Dayton (20), which owned the patent for the Ritty brothers’ cash register. At the time of Patterson’s acquisition, National Manufacturing Company was a business of small scale – it had sold just 359 cash registers (21), two of which had been to the Pattersons.

National Manufacturing Company changed its name to National Cash Register (22) in service of the new product. National Cash Register upgraded the machine – a new function included a printing action which dispensed a paper receipt (23). Within the culture of the company, Patterson applied a strategy which would remain integral to National Cash Register throughout the succeeding century – investment in research and development (24) and a commitment to product improvement.

In its early days, National Cash Register was considered to be a high-tech company (25), as its products were complex for their time. For a world not used to these machines, cash registers represented the leading edge of modernity, and National Cash Register became a community icon in Dayton. During the early years of cash registers being available for sale, they represented the most progressive and forward-looking way of doing business (26). At the time, businesses which relied on a simpler method of accounting needed to be convinced of the utility of something fancy – but complex and expensive (27). The cash register was an exciting appliance, but prospective customers in the business community doubted whether cash registers would improve accounting enough to be worth the upfront cost.

John Henry Patterson became a keen trainer of salespeople. He quickly developed a sweeping vision of what his company was capable of achieving, based in his experience as an early adopter of the cash register. If his sales teams could convince business owners that cash registers could improve the performance of their businesses, then business owners could be convinced to purchase cash registers. Selling a business a cash register was selling it a solution to a problem. The first step to solving a business’ problem was in convincing it that it had one.

Patterson’s guiding sales principle was that one register could be sold for every 400 inhabitants in each American town (28). This scale would prove to be a good guiding principle for National Cash Register’s sales teams. Sales improved over the succeeding years. In 1886, National Cash Register sold 1,000 cash registers (29). In 1889, National Cash Register sold 6,500 registers (30). As sales grew, National Cash Register refined its methods, developing its ability to reach out to proprietors of different business types. One of the side effects of National Cash Register’s business success was their contribution to the culture of salespersonship in America. For all the differences that shops of different kinds had between them, they all needed to make money, and they all benefited from closer accounting. The challenge was in convincing the businesses that closer accounting was worth investing in.

One record from 1891 shows an Atlanta-based National Cash Register agent selling registers to a wide variety of establishments. The record lists sales to 43 bars, 31 grocers, 7 drug stores, 6 butchers, 4 candy stores, 2 paint stores, 1 dairy, 1 billiards hall, 1 cookware store, and 1 ice storage business (31).

John Henry Patterson applied etiquette guides as well as dress codes for salespeople, who at that time had poor reputations for smelling like alcohol and tobacco in professional environments (32). The success of this tactic was obvious and affected not only the culture of National Cash Register internally, but the entire culture of salespersonship in America as well. National Cash Register’s dominance eventually caused the culture of sales in the U.S. to become more polished and well-regarded (33).

By 1910, National Cash Register controlled the market for cash registers (34). The millionth register was sold in 1911 (35). National Cash Register had two million registers in circulation in 1922 (36). At this point, cash registers had become a standard fixture (37). The precision of accounting, helped by the placement of cash registers, meant that businesses which sought to be competitive now needed a cash register to do it. The days where lackluster bookkeeping enabled recurrent shoplifting were over. Cash registers provided an easy and reliable way for management to supervise the flow of resources into and out of businesses. What was formerly a trust-based process was now carried out by machines. It was now impractical to run storefronts without cash registers, as they had become an essential part of commercial life.

National Cash Register’s cast metal casing became a familiar association with the brand (38), thanks to National Cash Register’s effectiveness in business and sales as well as marketing. National Cash Register cultivated their registers as art products. Images of machines from the early years of the 1900s show the extraordinary attention that the company paid to create beautiful and stylish machines. National Cash Register machines were decorated with scrolled metal as well as wood inlay (39). The beautiful artwork helped the registers sell themselves.

As the cash register business grew, so did National Cash Register’s standing in Dayton. In the mid-1900s, Dayton would be known as, “The City Of A Thousand Factories” (40). National Cash Register would become a part of Dayton’s culture and a source of its prosperity. Through the succeeding decades of the 1900s, National Cash Register would become an important part of the Dayton community.

In 1918, James Jacob Ritty died (41). At the time of his death, he had witnessed his machine changing the modern world for three decades.

John Henry Patterson supervised National Cash Register as its president from 1884 to 1921 (42). He died in 1922, a year after his departure (43). Among the skills which Patterson learned as the president of National Cash Register was that of hiring and training skilled people. Patterson’s influence, even posthumously, extended beyond National Cash Register’s campus and into the boardrooms of America’s giant companies. At the time of Patterson’s death, it was estimated that, “1/6 of the heads of the nation’s major corporations were former [National Cash Register staff] who spread [Patterson’s] methods throughout the U.S. business world” (44).

National Cash Register emerged as a major civic force in Dayton (45) during its time of market dominance. The company donated a parcel of land to the city for use as a public park, invested in neighborhoods close to the factory, and sponsored social programs for youth (46). The company’s amenities included a swimming pool, a band for high schoolers, and an auditorium (47). To the inhabitants of Dayton, National Cash register was known as, “The Cash” (48).

National Cash Register brought prosperity to Dayton, but its environment was not inclusive to all qualified candidates. Lloyd Lewis Jr. served in the Ohio House of Representatives between 1995 and 1998 (49). Lewis, who was Black, learned of de facto segregation at National Cash Register. Lewis recalls that National Cash Register’s Black employees were, “last hired and first fired” (50). This claim is supported by Lewis’ personal experience. In 1948, Lloyd Lewis was not offered a position by National Cash Register after he earned a business degree (51). This was problematic to him because National Cash Register had offered positions to all of his White classmates at the University of Dayton (52).

In 1906, National Cash Register created the first electric cash register (53), making a substantial advance in the performance of the machine. This new electric register used a motor built by a National Cash Register engineer named Charles Kettering (54). Before this step forwards in function, cash registers had been operated by manual cranks. These cranks rotated mechanical accounting tools similar to the accounting tools that the Ritty brothers used in their early registers.

In 1959, “The Cash”, began selling automatic coin dispensers to improve checkout time and limit human error (55). Early automatic coin dispensation machines were sold at premium prices (56), as they were complex products for their time.

Early automatic coin dispensers arrived at the time when supermarkets were being popularized. Machines had to keep pace with the rapidly changing times. It was essential that machines were able to complete complicated checkouts in environments where delays of even short durations could cost customer loyalty.

In May 1974, National Cash Register shortened its name to the acronym NCR (57). A major breakthrough for, “The Cash”, and for commerce in general, arrived that same year. It was called the barcode.

On the morning of June 26, 1974, in Troy, Ohio, the first product was scanned using the Universal Product Code, or UPC, in Marsh’s Supermarket using scanners from NCR (58). The Universal Product Code is known today as the barcode. The barcode format used a sequence of vertical lines to immediately input information into a machine via laser scan. It was the latest, and most successful version, of research and technologies which had gone back into the 1960s (59). The purpose of all of these inventions was to save customers time (60). An earlier version of the bar code had used a bulls-eye format, but this version was not democratized (61). When the bar code was introduced, it achieved what it had been created to achieve. It saved people time.

June 26, 1974 was the first date where a barcode as it is used in the modern day was scanned at a store checkout. NCR’s 255 scanning system was the scanning system that set the major mark in history (62). The barcode proved to be a massive asset to staff in retail environments. The time savings allowed by simply pointing an item at a laser and waiting for the machine to record the information was considerable. Grocery stores were now generations removed from the businesses which the Ritty brothers built their first registers for. In a new environment where competition emerged and new business tactics evolved rapidly, stores could not afford to fall short on customer satisfaction. Times had changed, and now the bar code became standard. It was not acceptable to fall short on a customer’s time when that customer could abandon the store and simply find another place to buy merchandise.

National Cash Register dominated the sales of cash register machines until the introduction of fully electronic registers (63) in the 1970s. NCR kept pace with this advance and converted their product line to electronic products as well (64).

The good times were not to last. Where there had been prosperity in the first half of the 1900s, recession and departure followed. AT&T took over NCR in 1991, renaming it AT&T Global Information Solutions (65). Between 1992 and 1995, the company endured a sequence of layoffs (66) which hurt local morale among Dayton residents. By the 1990s, a plant on Brown Street in Dayton which had formerly hosted 20,000 professionals now only hosted 200 (67). These final 200 professionals were dismissed when it closed (68).

As manufacturing jobs left Dayton, feelings of prosperity and community left as well. One of the major impacts which the departure of manufacturing had on Ohio in the later years of the 1900s was the decline of a sense of shared civic life among the inhabitants (69). The "City of a Thousand Factories” was losing its factories.

Dave Ponitz, the president of Sinclair Community College in Dayton, said in a 1996 interview, “There used to be more C.E.O.s who could make immediate decisions on community issues. Now there is more checking with corporate offices outside of Dayton to get those same decisions. And they usually come at a lower level of interest, and a lower dollar level” (70). While recounting the departure of NCR and other manufacturers, Ponitz makes clear that the departure of manufacturing from Ohio had consequences beyond the immediate corporate campus. The investments which NCR used to make in the beautification of its community were not continuing. The big businesses of Dayton were not what they had been.

An eyewitness to a meeting with the leader of AT&T’s new division, which had formerly been NCR, provides a perspective into the changes that had happened at the company and the frustration which people in Dayton felt as a result of these changes. The eyewitness recalled that the division’s new leader, “didn’t know a thing about Dayton” (71). Additionally, during the conversation, the eyewitness claimed that the topics centered on, “the information highway and globalization” (72). While this may have seemed like great opportunity for some of the leadership, and some of the investors, for those in Dayton witnessing this happen, it was upsetting and even devastating. Dayton was no longer the hub of business activity. It was merely the former home of a company which had fallen behind the times and was in the process of being exploited. No longer would NCR fund parks, or build amenities for its staff and the community. NCR was strictly a business now, and it had less interest in investing in the community compared to its prior self.

As challenging as it was for residents of Dayton to see what was happening to, “The Cash”, it was not an isolated instance. What had been the pride of Ohio – self-reliance and locally grown prosperity based on ingenuity and entrepreneurship – was not keeping up with the times. The trend in Dayton during the 1990s was for executives to report to other executives based elsewhere (73). This was a change from the past, when authority over large local companies had been located in the city.

In January 1996, AT&T G.I.S. announced it would be renaming the company NCR (74). In a turnaround for the company, C.E.O. Lars Nyberg made the major decision to terminate NCR’s personal computing line and focus on cash registers (75).

On October 16, 2023, NCR announced that it would be splitting into two separate entities, NCR Voyix and NCR Atleos (76). The separation occurred at the close of business on that same day (77).

NCR Voyix is the commercial and retail focused branch, while NCR Atleos is the banking and finance focused branch (78). NCR Voyix enables 75,000 retail lanes, 30,000 restaurant sites, and 1.2 billion items sold monthly (79). NCR Voyix advertises itself as the #1 point-of-sale software provider for retail and restaurants, advertises 100,000 stores powered by its products, and as the #1 point-of-sale service provider for grocery and convenience stores (80). NCR Atleos is a large global ATM deployer, operating 800,000 ATMs globally and powering 15,000 banks (81). 280,000 ATMs operated by NCR Atleos are located in retail environments (82).

As of October 2023, NCR is headquartered in Atlanta and employs 35,000 people (83).

Care of NCR’s former manufacturing property in Dayton has been transferred to the University of Dayton. The University of Dayton bought the 115-acre former campus for $18 million in 2009 (84). Old River Park, which was part of NCR’s former employee recreation area, has been transferred to the University of Dayton as well (85) (86).

In the modern day, cash registers are less frequently simple automatic cash and accounting boxes and more frequently computer interfaces which may be connected to central command centers located hundreds of miles away (87). Some forward-looking establishments have begun to decline cash payments, making the function of a cash box unnecessary and marking a full departure from the initial need for the product. Modern point of sale systems can also accept credit and debit cards and electronic benefit transfer, or EBT, which are utilities which did not exist when the first cash registers were introduced.

Modern registers still function in the same way that the Ritty brothers’ register did. Although the technology on the inside has changed, the machines, their structures, and their functions are similar. Most are still portable enough to be placed on countertops, which remain standard in stores.

The twenty-first century also saw the widespread introduction of self-checkout machines. The first self-checkout machine was introduced in a Kroger supermarket in 1986 (88). Self-checkout machines are now a common presence in supermarkets (89). NCR Voyix currently manufactures self-checkout machines (90), representing another step in the direction of technical advancement for the company. Where National Cash Register previously built machines to stop staff from pocketing revenues, now NCR Voyix makes machines which let a single store attendant process multiple customers at once. A store could do its accounting without an attendant while using a self-checkout register, but the need for staff provides the same checks on behavior that the original cash register was built to supervise. Without human supervision, customers would walk past self-checkout machines without paying for merchandise.

Commerce has changed greatly since the Ritty brothers introduced their first register. The cash register enabled scale and organization which would not have been achievable without the accounting help that it provided. As the twenty-first century progresses, cash registers and their successor technologies will remain a crucial part of commerce.

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