In days gone by, a common retail hack used by some of the less honorable of our peers was the price tag switcheroo. You’d find some item that you wanted from a store but couldn’t afford, search around a bit for another item with a more reasonable price, and carefully swap the little paper price tags. As long as you didn’t get greedy or have the bad luck of getting a cashier who knew the correct prices, you could get away with it — at least up until the storekeeper wised up and switched to anti-tamper price tags.
For better or for worse, those days are over. The retail point-of-sale (POS) experience has changed dramatically since the time when cashiers punched away at giant cash registers and clerks applied labels to the top of every can of lima beans in a box with a spiffy little gun. The growth and development of POS systems is the subject of [TanRu Nomad]’s expansive video history, and even if you remember the days when a cashier kerchunked your credit card through a machine to take an impression of your card in triplicate, you’ll probably learn something.
The history of POS automation stretches back to the 1870s, perhaps unsurprisingly thanks to the twin vices of alcohol and gambling. The “Incorruptible Cashier” was invented by a saloon keeper tired of his staff ripping him off, and that machine would go on to become the basis of the National Cash Register Corporation, or NCR. That technology would eventually morph into the “totalisator,” an early computer used to calculate bets and payout at horse tracks. In fact, it was Harry Strauss, the founder of American Totalisator, who believed strongly enough in the power of computers to invest $500,000 in a struggling company called EMCC, which went on to build UNIVAC and start the general-purpose computer revolution.
To us, this was one of the key takeaways from this history, and one that we never fully appreciated before. The degree to which the need of retailers to streamline their point-of-sale operations drove the computer industry is remarkable, and the video gives multiple examples of it. The Intel 4004, the world’s first microprocessor, was designed mainly for calculators but also found its way into POS terminals. Those in turn ended up being so successful that Intel came up with the more powerful 8008, the first eight-bit microprocessor. People, too, were important, such as a young Chuck Peddle, who cut his teeth on POS systems and the Motorola 6800 before unleashing the 6502 on the world.
So the next time you’re waving your phone or a chipped credit card at a terminal and getting a sterile “boop” as a reward, spare a thought for all those clunky, chunky systems that paved the way.
Thanks to [Ostracus] for the tip.
The only flaw I see in modern POS systems is the weighing they do in some countries’ self checkout machines. Minus that “place item in bagging area” nonsense it’s actually become quite a streamlined satisfying process.
People are holding a thin and cheap item under the actual item. They will ring up 1.000 worth of products as 40 items worth 1 or 2. If they don’t weigh it people will scam the store.
So hire cashiers
I worked for NCR for many decades and saw a lot of changes from mechanical cash registers to POS systems.
At Costco in the US, up until not that long ago, a customer would put all their stuff in their cart like normal and the cashier would simply hammer in the memorized item numbers on a keypad. No bar codes no nothing. It was remarkable. I got tires there recently and their computer system is still pea-green terminals and lots of tabbing through fields to input data. I guess if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
Back in the late 1960s or early 1970s, there was a book called “Steal This Book” that discussed many, “financial workarounds”. Exchanging bottle caps was one idea, dropping coins into an adjacent payphone for the operator to hear the coin-drop chimes, etc. were all ideas I remember. I don’t believe copying (Xeroxing as it was known back then) barcodes from a cheaper product to overlay a more expensive product’s barcode was mentioned back then.
Steal This Book was written a few years before barcodes were used on products.
By Abbie Hoffman
There was a lady that ran the register at the grocery store we used to shop at when I was a kid that was way faster on the mechanical register than any scanner system I’ve seen since.
Sounds like no one’s heard the story about the guy buying a $300 grill for the price of a can of tomato soup at I think Walmart using a barcode ring?
Former engineer for American Totalisator here. My then-boss, who had joined the company in the mid ’60s, told me of attending an Intel training workshop for engineers. I believe that this was in the runup to the introduction of the 8080. AmTote’s Unitote/Regitel division had used the 4004 microprocessor in POS terminals for some time at this point. There were some engineers from NCR at the same workshop. There was some breaktime banter along the lines of “We’ve got the jump on you, NCR — we’ve had microprocessors in terminals for years!” to which the reply was something like “We’re not worried, we’re NCR. We’ll catch up and beat you!” Which they did.
The old switcheroo has changed to using the self checkout and prestidigitation to scan a packet of Kool Aid while making it appear you scanned the item.
That is why they have so many AI cameras and employees for “self checkout”