Cash register

The cash register solved a problem as old as commerce itself: how do you prevent employees from stealing from the till? Before mechanical transaction recording, a shopkeeper had no way to verify what money came in during the day except counting what remained. Honest employees looked the same as dishonest ones. James Ritty, a Dayton saloon owner, was losing so much money to suspected employee theft that it nearly gave him a nervous breakdown.

The inspiration came from an unlikely source. On a steamship crossing to Europe in 1878, Ritty noticed a mechanism that counted the propeller shaft's revolutions—a mechanical memory that couldn't be fooled or forgotten. What if transactions could be counted the same way? Back in Dayton, Ritty and his brother John built a device that recorded each sale by pressing keys representing different amounts. The machine punched holes in a paper roll, creating an incorruptible record.

Ritty called it the "Incorruptible Cashier"—a name that announced its purpose without subtlety. The first version looked more like a clock than a modern register and didn't even have a cash drawer. Ritty patented the design on November 4, 1879, but struggled to commercialize it. Running both a saloon and a manufacturing business proved too much, and he sold out in 1881.

The next owner, Jacob Eckert, added the cash drawer and the bell—the distinctive "cha-ching" that became synonymous with transactions. But the real transformation came when John H. Patterson bought control in 1884 and formed the National Cash Register Company (NCR). Patterson didn't just sell machines; he created modern sales methodology.

Patterson's innovations extended far beyond the register itself. He established exclusive sales territories, paid generous commissions, created the first corporate sales training school (1893), and deployed service technicians to maintain machines after sale. He understood that selling a $50 register (equivalent to roughly $1,700 today) required convincing skeptical shopkeepers that preventing theft would pay for the machine many times over.

The biological parallel is transparent signaling in nature. Many animals have evolved signals that cannot be faked—the peacock's tail requires genuine resources to grow, the gazelle's stotting requires genuine fitness to perform. The cash register created a similar unfakeable signal in commerce: a permanent, mechanical record of every transaction that neither employee nor owner could alter after the fact.

NCR's growth was extraordinary. In their first year (1881), they sold 73 registers. By 1893, annual sales reached 42,345. By the early 20th century, NCR held roughly 95% of the American cash register market. The company became a training ground for future business leaders—Thomas Watson Sr., who would build IBM, learned sales at NCR before Patterson fired him.

The cascade from Ritty's invention reshaped retail commerce. Printed receipts gave customers proof of purchase. Running totals let owners track daily revenue. Itemized records by clerk enabled performance management. The register created trust where none existed before—trust between owner and employee, between merchant and customer.

By 2026, the physical cash register has evolved into point-of-sale systems, digital payment terminals, and inventory management software. But the core principle remains Ritty's: mechanical memory that creates an incorruptible record, solving the age-old problem of trust in commerce through technology that cannot be bribed.