Category: Two Guys

bookmark_borderSweda 800.

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In the late 1950s through the mid 1980s, many store chains used the Sweda Model 46 Dataregister at the checkout. These registers were the usual mechanical cash registers of the time with an additional mechanism on the left hand side. This extra mechanism punched a ribbon tape that would later be fed into a mainframe off site; the ribbon tape typically contained inventory information.

In the early and mid 1970s electronic systems began replacing these mechanical counterparts. Companies such as Data Terminal Systems, IBM, Singer-Friden, TRW, and Pitney-Bowes introduced new electronic point of sale systems into the market. Mechanical cash register manufacturers such as NCR and Sweda also began introducing electronic systems to the space.

I mentioned in a previous entry that the local Two Guys store at Northern Lights Plaza north of Syracuse, New York had electronic cash registers of some sort and I was pretty sure they were made by Sweda. A photo of a standard Two Guys checkout gives us a small glimpse at these registers.

I can’t find a Two Guys receipt from this era, but I previously featured a Bradlees receipt from that time frame that had the same distinct font I remember from the Two Guys receipt.

After some digging around on the Internet, I finally found an up close photo of one of these registers. The cash register is part of the “Sweda 800/80 system”. WT Grants apparently used this system before closing up shop in 1975. This is interesting to me, because the Two Guys at Northern Lights moved into a closed up WT Grants store at the same location.

From a Facebook search from a user in Mexico.
Back office computer

I’m still on the hunt for scans of old Two Guys receipts to confirm my research, as well as any other photos from the chain. I don’t know if Two Guys use of Sweda 800/80 registers was common to the chain, to the region, or to a particular store. At the time, many of the department store chains had varying register systems depending on region or location.

bookmark_borderThe Sweda Distinctive Font.

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Found through a Google search.

When my interest in cash registers became apparent to my mother and grandmother, they began purposely saving receipts so I could study them. If in attendance at the time of checkout I would associate the keystrokes I had observed the cashier doing on the cash register with the actions I saw printed on the receipt. Luckily, I have a very good memory and after one or two passes through a checkout I was able to memorize the layout of a cash register keyboard for that particular model in a particular store. As time goes on I can’t remember the keyboard layouts like I used to, but I do remember differences from store chain to chain and I mostly remember where the most important buttons (SKU, TOTAL, CASH TEND) were located.

I found the receipt shown above when doing some research on Bradlees back in the day. Being a native of Central New York, I wasn’t introduced to Bradlees until I moved to the greater Boston area in the latter half of the 1980s. However, when I saw this particular Bradlees receipt online I immediately knew what kind of cash register had generated the receipt, it was an electronic point of sale system by Sweda, the same system used by the nearby Two Guys when I was a kid.

Two Guys moved into the former W.T. Grants at the Northern Lights Shopping Center in North Syracuse, N.Y. in the mid 1970s. I remember it feeling like it was a big deal because the Grants building would no longer be empty and Two Guys was an up and coming department store chain from downstate and New Jersey.

Image courtesy of SyracuseNostalgia.com

The distinct font found on the receipt generated by the Sweda POS system made it easy for me to identify which stores were using that system. Sweda was easy for me to remember, there were tons of Sweda mechanical cash registers in the various department store chains in the area. This was the first time I remember seeing an electronic Sweda cash register.

I don’t remember a lot outside of the distinctive print from the register. I have a hazy memory of the registers having two drawers and the Cash Tendered key being up in the upper left hand corner of the keyboard, one marked “A” and one below it marked “B”. As far as the accuracy of that hazy memory, well that’s anyone’s guess.

Sweda did not make a huge splash in the electronic cash register business and they were quite rare to find when visiting various stores. NCR, IBM, and Data Terminal Systems were all much more prevalent from my point of view in Upstate New York, however, I did encounter some Sweda scanning systems at Quality Markets in Western New York, though without the distinctive font shown on the receipt above. Shaw’s in Massachusetts also used Sweda scanning systems around the same time.

The only photo I’ve been able to find of one of these Sweda machines is shown in this photo from a Two Guys closing sale in 1980. If you look in the lower right hand corner of the photo you can see a Sweda cash register, the housing being rather distinctive and fitting the design language of standalone Sweda registers of the time.

Photo courtesy of The Morning Call.