"Life is like a cash register, in that every thought, every deed, like every sale, is... recorded."
Fulton J. Sheen, archbishop
Before the cash register came into-being, short of sitting and watching every transaction taking place, there was no way for the boss or manager of a shop or other establishment to check exactly how much money was being taken over the counter each day. Sick of his light-fingered staff pilfering the takings from his saloon in Dayton, Ohio, proprietor James Ritty (1836-1918) decided that he would design a system to put a stop to employee embezzlement.
The inspiration for the machine came to Ritty after he traveled by ship to Europe. While on board he became fascinated by a contraption that kept a record of how many rotations the ship's propeller had made. With this as inspiration, Ritty set to Work on the prototype for the first cash register.
Ritty was trained as a mechanic, but he had given up manual labor in favor of running his own business. It therefore took him several attempts to create a working model but, with the help of his mechanic brother, the first cash register—"Rttty's Incorruptible Cashier"—was patented in 1879.
Ritty's cash register differed from today's versions significantly. For example, it had no cash drawer. The fledgling machines were simply devices to record that a transaction had taken place and counted the grand total on a dial like a clock face. Ritty continued to develop the machine, later adding paper rolls and pins to make a physical record of the transaction, and he began to sell them to the public,
Unable to run both the saloon and his cash register business, Ritty sold the company to Jacob H. Eckhart for the sum of $1,000. Eckhart in turn, sold it on to John H. Patterson. In 1884, the company was renamed the National Cash Register Company, which is still in operation today as NCR Corporation.
