Karen Bowman

Nov 4, 1879: A saloon owner in Dayton, Ohio, got a patent for the first mechanical cash register. He invented it because his employees were stealing from him. James Ritty knew some of his bartenders were pocketing money instead of putting it in the till, and he couldn't prove it. On a steamship trip to Europe, he noticed a device in the engine room that counted how many times the ship's propeller turned. He figured a machine could count sales the same way. He and his brother built one. It displayed the amount of each sale and kept a running total. He called it Ritty's Incorruptible Cashier. Later versions added a bell that rang every time the drawer opened, so the boss could hear every sale. Ritty didn't want to run a factory. He sold the business, and in 1884 a man named John Patterson bought it and renamed it the National Cash Register Company. Patterson built one of the first great modern sales forces. One of his star salesmen was Thomas Watson. Patterson eventually fired him. Watson went on to run the company that became IBM.