History Of Ritty

“In 1878, while on a ship bound for Europe, Ritty saw a machine that counted the number of times that the ship's propeller completed a revolution. Using the same sort of technology, Ritty became convinced that he could invent a machine that could keep track of his sales.” (Ohiohistorycentral.org) The cash register is something you see everywhere in daily life, but it started out as a small invention made by James Ritty, to keep track of his sales. James Ritty made the invention that would revolutionize American consumerism, but it was John H. Patterson who truly popularized the invention with the National Cash Register Company (NCR) in the 1880s. NCR is an old American company that has managed to persevere through the years and is still in business today. The cash register is an iconic American invention that was invented in Dayton, Ohio and popularized by NCR (formerly headquartered in

In their first commercial model, sold as ‘Ritty’s Incorruptible Cashier,’ they replaced the recording mechanism with a paper tape, and introduced pop-up numbers to indicate sales.” (Smithsonian.si.edu) Ubiquitous throughout the world today, cash registers were invented in Dayton, Ohio in 1878 by James Ritty and his engineer brother, John Ritty. The first cash register was invented in response to the continual theft of James Ritty’s profits at his small Saloon. Enraged with the theft of his profits, Ritty went about inventing a machine that could “register” all the sales that he made and promptly christened it, “Ritty’s Incorruptible Cashier.” Later on, the brothers improved their invention for commercial sale, but unfortunately the invention didn’t generate enough profits and their small business failed. When their business tanked, the brothers sold the rights to another person and that person eventually sold the rights again, to John H. Patterson (the founder of the National Cash Register