The National Cash Register Company (NCR) traces its origins to 1879, when James Ritty invented the first mechanical cash register. The device was designed to prevent theft by clerks by providing a visible record of transactions and a locked cash drawer. In 1884, John and Frank Patterson, from Dayton, Ohio, purchased the company and its patents and renamed it the National Cash Register Company. The Pattersons transformed the company into one of the first modern American corporations by introducing innovative sales techniques, guaranteed sales territories, and sales quotas. By 1886, sales had more than doubled to 1,000 machines per year. Two years later, the company became multinational. In 1906, NCR introduced the first electric cash register, which remained in production for nearly forty years.
In 1953, it established an Electronics Division and acquired the Computer Research Corporation (CRC), marking its entry into the computer industry. In 1974, NCR commercialized the first bar code scanners, which were used for the first time at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio. They remained a pioneer in open systems architecture with the launch of the NCR Tower supermicrocomputer in 1982. NCR was acquired by AT&T in 1991, marking the end of its independent operation. Five years later, the restructuring of AT&T led to NCR's re-establishment at the beginning of 1997 as a separate company and involved the spin-off of Lucent Technologies from AT&T. As of 2023, NCR Corporation was split into two independent public companies: NCR Voyix legally succeeded NCR Corporation, while the ATM business was spun-off as NCR Atleos.
Note: The above advertisement is from 1957.
