I mean like the one pictured here.
I was wondering was it hard to work? It seems like it has the numbers going vertically then one to the left increases it by ten?
If anyone has working knowledge of this, I’d appreciate any info you have on how to work it. Just curious. Seems harder than today’s electronic models. Or was this electronic?
Yes I used them for a few years in the early 1970s and a credit card imprinter that inputed the cost by sliding the pennies, dimes, dollars, tens of dollars up to the correct value to imprint the receipt. Like this guy http://m.ebay.com/itm/111579279434?_mwBanner=1
Very simple to run.
Yup. I worked in a drug store back in the mid 70’s that had one very much like that. It was kind of a pain in the ass; if you hit a wrong button the manager had to come fix the error.
Yeah, it’s similar (but a little less) than the register my dad had in his store. I learned to work it at age 10. It was electro - mechanical, not electronic. You’d enter a price, hit the big button on the side, and repeat until the last item. You’d hit the total button after that, the total price would pop up, a bell would ring, and the cash drawer would spring open. We lived in DE, so there was no sales tax. And there was no amount tendered button, so I had to learn how to count out change.
It wasn’t hard to learn.
I used one for years at the bar I worked at in the late 80’s - early 90’s, very simple to use.
Yes, when I was a waitress in the 60s. I’d never used one before, and I’ve never used one since, so it wasn’t easy or hard. It was all I knew.
My dad had one at his store, I remember seeing it, but by the time I started working there it was gone and replaced with normal ones. I have no idea what happened to it, they’re not the kind of people to throw that kind of stuff away. Must’ve sold it to someone, otherwise they’d probably still have it in a back corner somewhere.
I lasted about a week as a supermarket cashier in 1969 when I was 17. I don’t recall the register as being at all hard to work. It was just a nuisance having to figure out the change.
I used registers like that back in the mid 60’s. A local camera store, and a drug store. If there was a power failure there’s a spot on the right side to insert a hand crank. Press the numbers and turn the crank one revolution. Then enter the next item, repeat.
Yep, I operated a similarly configured cash register in the late '70s in McDonald’s. The register was made by a company named Sweda, and although it had a shiny aluminum housing and not a wooden one, operating it was pretty much the same as the one in the OP’s link: Ninety nine cents? hit the 90 button and the 9 button, then smash the big ‘add’ button with your palm. A dollar forty nine? Hit the 1 button in the third column from the right, the 40 button, then then the 9 button in the right column, and smash the add button.
I became really fast on the register because after a few days I didn’t need to look at the buttons at all and could calculate the sales tax in my head.
This was all before computers when you actually had to have a brain to operate a cash register.
We had one at the farm stand; that was the “new” one, LOL! Those buttons on the left are the real PITA. they categorize each purchase for inventory and sales prediction purposes. So you had to remember to mash the tomato button or the peach button before you entered the price, or else you’d have to unscroll the run tape and mark it in. (It had two receipt tapes, one you pulled off for the customer, and one that wound up in a big roll for the manager.
The older one was easier, because we just set the prices to end in, say, 3 for peaches and 4 for cucumbers or something. That way was easier and required fewer steps for all concerned. Judging by the categories, I’d say the one in your photo was from a hardware store.
Also the buttons were much harder to press than the old ones, and they went down a long way. I hated that thing.
Yep. One pretty much like the one in the picture, and a bigger one with more rows of buttons. That one had a hand crank to use as a back up when the power went out.
I used one that looked much like this:
It predated sales tax, so we figured that out on a calculator, and had to figure out and make change ourselves, good for the brain and all that, but it made the wonderful, wonderful ka-ching! sound
when you cranked it.
I used one at a convenience store in the early 1970’s. Back then, we could make change in our heads.
We had that exact design in our family store (still do, only we haven’t used it in years). Simple to use. You’d press a button on the left to indicate the type of sale (I think we just used “I” for everything), then the numbers for the amount. When sales tax came around, we’d just look up the amount on a tax table pasted on it and add it using paper and pencil.
We sold appliances, so for those you had to enter $99.99 for each $100, then any amount over that.
The drawer tray had five holders not four: in the change there was space for pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and half dollars. For paper money, it was ones, twos, fives, tens, and twenties. You never saw a fifty or a hundred. Checks (and later, credit card slips) went under the trays.
They required no power (the old one was pressed into service a few times when we stayed open and the power was out). It used a spring; the bar at the right released the drawer and printed the amount on a sheet of paper (at the right front in the photo; there was no receipt). When you pushed the drawer back in, it pushed back the spring so it was ready for the next time.
Making change was simple using the counting up method; they even taught in in elementary school. No math in your head, either. Here’s the technique:
Say the amount was $2.07 and you’re given a ten-dollar bill
You say:
2.07 (amount of purchase)
8
9
10 (counting out pennies with each number)
15 (nickel)
25 (taking a dime)
$3 (three quarters)
4
5 (counting out a dollar each time).
10 (taking a $5 bill).
We once hired someone who was having trouble doing the math in his head. I told him about this and he was doing it ten minutes later.
That basic design was universal from the 1930s to the early 1970s or so. Then they were slowly replaced by electronic ones and became real rare by about 1990.
One unexpected thing that sounded the death knell for many of them was inflation. Prior to about 1965, almost nothing you could buy in a grocery store cost over $5. So a register that could only input items up to $9.99 was fine. When the massive inflation hit and suddenly many items were approaching or exceeding $9.99 the registers needed to be replaced with ones that had an additional column of input buttons for multiples of $10. As the early electronic ones with adding machine-style keyboards were just coming out, many large chains chose to make the switch then rather than double-down their investment in the old electro-mechanical systems.
If you hit the wrong button on a modern one the manager often has to come fix the error too. That has everything to do with the store’s policy on mis-rings and nothing to do with the technology of the cash register. To be sure, with UPC scanners the number of mis-rings is fewer than it once was.
Thanks for the replies.
Question 1) Someone mentioned errors had to be corrected by a manager? Was that true for all of these types? I have worked a modern register, well more of a computer, and we could correct things by ourselves till the sale was final.
Question 2) How did the receipt look? I seem to recall when I was little, the grocers we used (I lived in the rural country) just had prices on them not items.
Thanks
In the picutre, the receipt would come out just about the tape in the box on the left front where you see the register tape. The one in the photo doesn’t seem to have one. To tell the truth I can’t recsll if we gave out receipts our not.
Correcting errors was store policy, not an issue with the cash register. If you look at the register tape at the left, you’ll see a window. There was a hole in it to write notes, so it was simple to right the corrected price next to the wrong one.
The receipts just had the amount of each item and perhaps a department number off to the left of the amount. A sub total, then the sales tax and total of the sale.
Ability to print item names etc. came along with scanners and UPCs as I recall. Ever notice that at the grocery store even though they scan the items in the order you put them on the belt they are grouped by type on your receipt? Takes a computer for that.
Now that I think of it, the register shown in the photo didnt print out receipts. The were used in small businesses and receipts werent given for every sale back then (we also wouldn`t give out a bag if you bought a single item). Items had price stickers with the store name, so it was easy to verify a return, plus you knew your stock pretty well, so it was hard to fake one.
For big-ticket items like TVs or refrgerators, you wrote up a paper recept (with carbons); you needed that anyway since you were usually delivering the item.
Supermarkets had a different type of register that was part adding machine and did have a receipt. But the one in the photo usually only handled small orders (very often one item) so the total was all that was needed to be registered.
Nearly verthiung we sold was taxable, so we didn`t differentiate. Sales Taxes were just calculated as a percentage of total sales. The only exception in our case were American flags, so we just made a note when we sold one. And, of course, you could designate one of the Roman number keys as nontaxable.
