I am not in the photo shown above. I am, however, old enough to remember when the cash register you see in that photo was brand new. In fact, I’m old enough to remember when all the department stores and supermarkets were still using mechanical cash registers. Except for Sears. I don’t ever remember seeing a mechanical cash register at Sears; they had already migrated to one of the first computerized point of sale systems in the United States. It was made by Singer-Friden. More on that in a future post.
The cash register you see in use above is an NCR 255. It is being controlled by two NCR 726 Minicomputers in the back office. While the NCR 255 was capable of scanning, at the time scanning was found only in some progressive supermarket chains. It would be a little while before scanning became standard operating procedure at your local grocer; and it would be even a little longer before Walmart led the way to bring scanning to the discount department stores and other merchandise vendors across the land.
I am a software developer by trade. I have always been interested in technology and what led me into technology to begin with was the blossoming field of computerized point of sale and cash register equipment in the 1970s and 1980s. It wouldn’t be until the mid 1980s that I would actually use (and in some instances, program) this equipment, but I knew the ins and outs of how these devices worked before I was a teenager. If there was appropriate testing back in the day I’d probably be pegged for some sort of spectrum, and cash registers and the like were my primary focus. I knew how they worked, I could tell the differences between systems just by a receipt, and I knew I wanted to play with computers for the rest of my life.
This blog is born from my personal blog elsewhere on the Internet. I have a lot of information to share, mostly based on memory, some anecdotal, and even more from research I’ve been doing. There’s not a lot of information on the Internet about these early systems, but I’m always on the search for anything I can find. Operator’s manuals. Memories and anecdotes from others. Anything I can share because I know I’m not alone in this interest. I’ll be categorizing my entries by store chain and equipment manufacturer. I’ll also be adding an area for document sharing.
Thanks for stopping by. I look forward to adding more information soon.
In the meantime, here’s what a receipt from the NCR 255 would have looked like. This receipt is also courtesy of the “Remembering Hills Department Store” group on Facebook.
