History of the cash register

It was in the late 1800’s that James Jacob Ritty, of Ohio, invented the first working version of a mechanical cash register.

Ritty was a bar keeper who owned his own saloon, The Pony House. Facing the problem of some dishonest employees, he wanted to discover a way of recording cash transactions at the saloon. Working with his brother, John, they designed the prototype for the cash registers we use today.

The machine was operated by pressing a key that represented a specific amount of money. At this stage there was no cash drawer. Ritty patented the design in 1879 as "Ritty's Incorruptible Cashier". He opened a small factory to manufacture cash registers while still operating the saloon.

Running the factory and The Pony House proved too much for Ritty and he sold all of his interests in the cash register business to Jacob H. Eckert of Cincinnati. In 1884 Eckert sold the company to John H. Patterson, who named the business The National Cash Register Company.

Patterson continued to improve on Ritty's invention, adding paper rolls to record the days transactions. With each sale, a paper tape was punched with holes. At the end of the day, the merchant could add up the holes and therefore determine his daily cash sales.

Improvements in the cash register followed. In 1906, while working at the National Cash Register Company, inventor Charles F. Kettering designed a cash register with an electric motor.

Ritty died in 1918, however his cash register concept lived on