NEW YORK (AP) — Imagine a store without a cash register and no
other accurate ways to quickly tally up daily sales. That was
the case for all retail establishments before the 1880s. Most
store owners were left in the dark about whether they were
making a profit or loss — and many suffered since it was easy
for sales clerks to steal from the cash drawer. That all changed
with the invention of the cash register following the Civil War
by a little-known saloon owner, setting into motion decades of
innovation. Here, a look at the history of the cash register and
some highlights at NCR, formerly known as the National Cash
Register Co., which helped to make the machine ubiquitous at
stores across the country starting in the early 1900s: —1879:
James Ritty, a saloon owner in Dayton, Ohio, patents a machine
with a mechanism that's inspired from the apparatus that counts
the spins of an ocean liner's propeller in its engine room. The
so-called "incorruptible cashier" was the first mechanical cash
register and had meta