This particular machine, model #5, is a detail adder, and is one of the first registers NCR ever created. For many collectors, such fixtures capture the spirit of the American inventor and represent the earliest contributions to the Machine Age. Tinkerers and collectors of “gadgets” are also drawn to early cash registers.
Like the shopkeepers of old, today’s collector is still attracted to their beauty. For one, early registers were big, bold, and beautiful pieces of art flaunting shiny metal and rich wood materials, and produced in a variety of ornate designs. Collectors’ Interests in Antique Cash RegistersĪntique cash registers attract collectors from a variety of genres, for many different reasons. Patterson, who subsequently re-named the company, National Cash Register Corporation, known today as NCR. In 1884, he sold the patent and the company to John H. However, much like his predecessor, Eckhert soon found himself in over his head. This style is typically found on small barber shop and candy store registers. Also pictured, a cash register drawer front in original condition. The design was patented on November 4 th, 1879, as “ Ritty’s Incorruptible Cashier“.
There was no cash drawer at this point, just a running tally. That total would then be displayed on the register. When the clerk was ready to complete a sale, they would press a key on the machine that would add the transaction to the day’s sales total. The third prototype operated by pressing keys that corresponded to specific dollars and cents. After two failed attempts, they finally rang up a winner.
The two immediately began working on a prototype. Having a “counting” problem himself, he wondered whether something similar could be made to count the cash transactions back at his saloon.Īs soon as he returned to Dayton, Ritty asked his mechanically inclined brother, John, for help. A year earlier, while on a steamboat trip to Europe, the self-described “ Dealer in Pure Whiskies, Fine Wines, and Cigars” became enamored by a mechanism that counted the revolutions of the steamboat’s propeller. Necessity is the Mother of Inventionįed up with bartenders stealing from him, James Jacob Ritty, a Dayton, Ohio saloonkeeper, invented the first mechanical cash register in 1879. Those are the same attributes that draw the interest of today’s collector. These early fixtures had to be the shiny, crown jewel of the shopkeeper’s establishment―a shrine to the money they held. Early cash register manufacturers had to sell their registers not just on functionality, but also on beautiful, ornate design.
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