A Brief History of POS Systems

There is no denying the benefits, to both business and customer alike, that point of sale systems provide. However, many of us take these benefits for granted, forgetting that there was once a time when all retail stores, from small to very large, had to depend solely on pencil and pad for all their business's transactions. So, without further ado, let's take a brief look at just how far POS has come, and how we got there as well.

The history of POS systems can be traced all the way back to the year 1870, when James Ritty, a highly successful saloon owner in Dayton, Ohio, realized that, regardless of the fact that he was successful, he was still losing a lot profit due to his thieving employees, who were pocketing the customer's money. Later, while on a boat trip to Europe, Ritty made a grand discovery; there he saw before him an automatic counter that kept track of the number of times that the ship's propeller spun around, and in that he saw the potential of creating a machine that would record all the transactions in his saloon, eliminating the possibility of his employees stealing from him ever again!

So, once back in the States, and excited about his new idea, Ritty immediately collaborated with his brother, and the result was the invention of what we now know to be the first cash register. Of course, at that time they wanted it to be called "Ritty's Incorruptible Cashier", but, alas, that name just didn't stick. Instead they ended up calling it, of course, a cash register, and would later open up a factory in Dayton where they could build them for other businesses to use. Over the years, what started out as a small manufacturing plant for cash registers ended up becoming the "National Manufacturing Company", where consecutive generations of owners would continue to improve on Ritty's original design, eventually incorporating the printing of receipts.

After a while there wasn't much left to improve on the design of what were then modern cash registers. Until the 1970's, that is, when computer-based cash registers were first introduced, making it so that rows of registers could all be linked together to a central hub, where information about all of them could be logged. Then, in the 1980's, cash registers started incorporating PC technology, which meant that the age of fully integrated POS systems was indeed on it's way. Also, around the same time, the first credit card machines started showing up, taking almost 20 years to finally eradicate the old method of using carbon copy paper to "scan" the card.

So, there you have it, a brief history of how our modern POS systems came into existence. Today's POS systems are highly efficient, lightening fast, computer based and more advanced than anything that has come before, but it's good to remember that it all started with a creative saloon owner who just wanted what all business owners want, to be able to sell their products and services easily and efficiently.