Re: Why do cash registers say, “insert document to be franked”? Who’s Frank?
I hadn’t ever noticed cash registers using the word this way before, but what do I know? I’m not a cashier and I suppose that message only appears on the screen that the cashier sees.
I did, however, work for a small fambly-owned company that wrote a cash register program (which I still work on as a free-lance third-partier), and I was specifically the in-house programmer and guru with everything having to do with whatever the receipt printer printed.
We never used the word “frank” that way that I knew of. The message was always simply “Insert check” or “Insert WIC coupon” or “Insert <whatever>”, possibly including the words “for endorsement” or similar. There were several types of documents that got endorsed like this, typically showing the date, time, transaction number, and amount. Checks got the store name and bank account number too and words like “For deposit only”.
Receipt printers have gotten fancier and snazzier over recent years, taking on more and more functions, just like your microwave oven that also washes the dishes and windows, vacuums the floor, and mows the lawn. Being dot-matrix devices, they can draw pictures, so many receipts now include the store’s graphic logo. I programmed our registers to do that too. They can print in any orientation (at 90 degree increments) and in three to six sizes. In the days of impact dot-matrix printers with ribbons, some had red-and-black ribbons so parts could be in red. (We printed “Thank You” at the bottom in double-high double-wide red, and refund lines were also in red.)
Some registers will print the check for you. Just stick the blank check in, face-up the long way, and it prints (sideways) all the necessary information – store name, amount (there’s enough room to print the amount double-size), and amount in words. And you’ve all certainly noticed that modern receipt printers have a built-in guillotine that slices the paper for you so the cashier doesn’t have to do the exhausting chore of, you know, actually tearing it off!
Older printers (some models) actually had a rubber stamp in them, that could stamp the store’s logo on each receipt. Many had a separate smaller printer inside positioned to print on the back side, so they could print both sides of a check without the cashier having to turn the slip over.
Modern thermal printers have taken over the market these days. They are fast and much quieter, and can do those graphic logos with higher resolution. But they only print on coated paper, so ix-nay on the check printing. No, wait a minute! Many of these actually are three separate printers in one! Thermal printer for receipts. Little impact printer for printing checks. And another little impact printer for printing the back-side of checks and various other slips!
Or, OTOH, there are those printers that have a flipper in them, so they can flip the check over internally to print both sides. (Or, alternatively, jam and mangle it beyond repair. I assume that cash register dealers charged extra for models with this exclusive option.)
But wait! There’s more! You’ve all seen those check-readers they slide your checks through to verify them. (If not at stores, then certainly at banks.) Yes, receipt printers even have that built into them now. That’s why you see printers suck a check in, then spit it back out, then suck it in again. First pass is to read the magnetic text at the bottom of the check. Second pass, typically, is to print the [del]endorsement[/del] – uh, Frank – on the back.
And, on top of all that, some printers can have additional devices daisy-chained off of them – most often, the cash drawer. This allows the program to operate a lot of devices without lots of extra ports on the computer. Otherwise, there were also circuit cards available to stick in the computer with numerous (like, 8 or even 16) additional COM ports for the scanner, scale, cash drawer, pole display, pin pad, modem, and various other goodies.
All these fancy-schmancy features are controlled by the cash register program, via “escape codes” or other special characters. Epson printers have become the de-facto near-standard for these, but features and options vary from model to model, and other printers (especially older ones and impact printers) have their own “languages”. Our registers could only talk to two Epson models when I started. I brought to the company the concept of a database to describe printer models and their functions (as inspired by the Unix printcap and termcap files), and suddenly our register could handle dozens of printer models.
But we never called it “franking” in our product line.