Musings about our first generation of electronic point of sale equipment
As of this writing I believe there is one Kmart left in the continental United States. Confined to what used to be the store’s Garden Center, the main store at the one remaining location was leased to the chain At Home. I’m continuing research on the electronic point of sale systems used in the 20th […]
I found this photo on ebay. At Sears, customers were asked “will this be cash or charge?” at the beginning of the purchase process, and if it was a charge sale, they’d enter your credit card information before ringing up the sale. I believe this practice continued into the days after the Singer-Friden MDTS system […]
This is another Kmart related entry. Before Kmart began consolidating and standardizing their point of sale systems in the late 1980s, stores were using a myriad of cash register solutions. Kmart implemented the NCR Class 5 cash register, the last mechanical cash register manufactured by NCR for as long as they could. In the late […]
I stumbled across this photo from a Kmart in an unknown location. From what I can tell, Kmart briefly pursued a “box” type, no-frills supermarket model in the very late 1970s. They didn’t last very long. The cash register in the first photo is made by FJay. The design of the register is a bit […]
I stumbled across a video featuring the Pitney Bowes-Alpex SPICE system, complete with super early barcode scanning. The Pitney Bowes-Alpex joint venture was fairly short lived, lasting from 1970 until late 1973. SPICE stands for “Sales Point Information Computing Equipment”. Notice the Nixie-tube display. Also, the keypad was arranged in 2×5 vertical arrangement instead of […]
It all started here, as announced in Computerworld in May 1973. I recently found this picture of an NCR 2552 terminal online. Part of the NCR 255 Supermarket Checkout system, this newer model was introduced in 1978 and worked with the existing NCR 255 system. While the NCR 2552 had a dot matrix printer, the […]
As found on Youtube. Featuring the IBM 3663 Supermarket Terminal. And here’s a brochure on the IBM 3660 Supermarket System, as found on archive.org. https://ia801001.us.archive.org/23/items/bitsavers_ibmbrochurtSystem_2636112/IBM3660SuperMarketSystem_text.pdf
I often do searches online for various legacy point of sale systems, including the NCR 255 and IBM 3680 systems. I stumbled across this narrative from computer.rip, which echoes a lot of my feelings of where we’re going with point of sale equipment today (toward unsuitable iPad and similar equipment). Computers are trending toward an […]
Continuing from last week’s post, here’s some more documentation from the RSPA’s (Retail Solutions Providers Association) 75th anniversary celebration during their RetailNOW convention earlier this summer. Here’s the documentation featuring the Data Terminal Systems Series 200 cash registers. I remember seeing these registers in the wild; a local gas station used it as their primary […]
The Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA) is celebrating the 75th anniversary this year and at their recent RetailNOW gathering, featured an exhibit of technology in the point of sale space over the years. In addition to the vintage equipment on display (shown in previous blog entry photos), they’ve also put together an impressive library of […]