NCR Voyix
NCR Voyix Corporation, previously known as NCR Corporation and National Cash Register, is a global software, consulting and technology company providing several professional services and electronic products. It manufactured self-service kiosks, point-of-sale terminals, automated teller machines, check processing systems, and barcode scanners.
NCR was founded in Dayton, Ohio, in 1884. It grew to become a dominant market leader in cash registers, then decryption machinery, then computing machinery, and computers over the subsequent 100 years.
By 1991, it was still the fifth-largest manufacturer of computers. That year, it was acquired by AT&T.
A restructuring of AT&T in 1996 led to NCR's re-establishment on January 1, 1997, as a separate company and involved the spin-off of Lucent Technologies from AT&T. In June 2009, the company sold most of the Dayton properties and moved its headquarters to the Atlanta metropolitan area, near Duluth. In early January 2018, the new NCR Global Headquarters opened in Midtown Atlanta near Technology Square.
In October 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.
History
Early years
The company began as the National Manufacturing Company of Dayton, Ohio, and was established to manufacture and sell the first mechanical cash register invented in 1879 by James Ritty. In 1884, the company and patents were bought by John Henry Patterson and his brother Frank Jefferson Patterson, and the firm was renamed the National Cash Register Company. Patterson formed NCR into one of the first modern American companies by introducing new, aggressive sales methods and business techniques. He established the first sales training school in 1893 and introduced a comprehensive social welfare program for his factory workers.In 1899, National Cash Register Company bought patents for improving cash register technology from the dissolving Rochester Cash Register Company, for which trucking executive George F. Roth had been an investor and board member.
Other significant figures in the early history of the company were Thomas J. Watson, Sr., Charles F. Kettering and Edward A. Deeds.
Watson—later fired by Patterson in 1914—eventually worked his way up to general sales manager. At an uninspiring sales meeting, Watson interrupted, saying "The trouble with every one of us is that we don't think enough. We don't get paid for working with our feet — we get paid for working with our heads". Watson then wrote THINK on the easel. Signs with this motto were later erected in NCR factory buildings, sales offices and club rooms during the mid-1890s. "THINK" later became a widely known symbol of IBM, which was created by Watson after he joined the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company.
Kettering designed the first cash register powered by an electric motor in 1906. Within a few years he developed the Class 1000 register which was in production for 40 years, and the O.K. Telephone Credit Authorization system for verifying credit in department stores.
Deeds and Kettering went on to found Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company which later became the Delco Electronics Division of General Motors.
In 1913, the company's market share was dominant and it was successfully prosecuted under the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The ruling was appealed and executives avoided at least some of the court's strictures.
American Selling Force
When John H. Patterson and his brother took over the company, cash registers were expensive and only about a dozen of "Ritty's Incorruptible Cashier" machines were in use. There was little demand for the expensive device, but Patterson believed the product would sell once shopkeepers understood it would drastically decrease theft by salesclerks. He created a sales team known as the "American Selling Force" which worked on commissions and followed a standard sales script, the "N.C.R. Primer." This was the first known sales training manual in existence. The philosophy was to sell a business function rather than just a piece of machinery. Sales demonstrations were set up in hotels depicting a store interior complete with real merchandise and real cash. The sale prospect was described as the "P.P." or "Probable Purchaser." Once initial objections were swept aside and the P.P. admitted to internal theft losses, the product was demonstrated along with large business charts and diagrams. The deal was sealed with a 25 cent cigar.Patterson also invented the formal sales training academy, a summer event first set up in canvas tents and called "Sugar Camp." The first known form of direct mail advertising also came courtesy of Patterson, who sent mail pieces to a predetermined list of addresses about his products. Patterson's "Get a Receipt" campaign was one of the world's first advertising campaigns.
Welfare work
NCR undertook extensive welfare work and was referred to as "America's model factory." Some historians have referred to company owner John Patterson as the "father of industrial welfare." The company had its own welfare department and is considered a pioneer in America for this work.Some of the company's welfare initiatives include safety devices, drinking fountains, baths, lockers, chairs and back support for machine operators, indoor bathrooms and a ventilation system to provide clean air. There were special provisions for female employees including restrooms, shorter work hours, high-back chairs, a women's dining room, and lessons in domestic science. In 1893, NCR constructed the first "daylight factory" buildings with floor-to-ceiling glass windows that let in light and could be opened to let in fresh air as well.
Expansion
NCR expanded quickly and became multi-national in 1888. Between 1893 and 1906 it acquired a number of smaller cash register companies.By 1911 it had sold one million machines and had grown to almost 6,000 employees. Combined with rigorous legal attacks, Patterson's methods enabled the company to fight off bankruptcy, buy-out over 80 of its early competitors, and achieve control of 95% of the U.S. market.
In 1912 the company was found guilty of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. Patterson, Deeds, Watson and 25 other NCR executives and managers were convicted of illegal anti-competitive sales practices and were sentenced to one year of imprisonment. Their convictions were unpopular with the public due to the efforts of Patterson and Watson to help those affected by the Dayton, Ohio, floods of 1913, but efforts to have them pardoned by President Woodrow Wilson were unsuccessful. However, their convictions were overturned on appeal in 1915 on the grounds that important defense evidence should have been admitted.
In 1918, the company signed a contract with the US Army to produce 100,000 M1911 pistols for use in World War I. The contract was canceled a few months later after the war ended, with no pistols having been delivered.
Two million cash register units were sold by 1922, the year John Patterson died. In January, 1926, NCR went public with an issue of $55 million in stock, at that time the largest public offering in United States history. During the first World War, NCR manufactured fuses and aircraft instrumentation, and during World War II built aero-engines, bomb sights and code-breaking machines, including the American bombe designed by Joseph Desch.
US Navy Bombe, code breaking machine
The US Navy Bombe was built by NCR for the United States Naval Computing Machine Laboratory to decrypt the Enigma machine that encrypted German military messages.The NCR-made American bombes were faster, and soon more available, than the British bombes at Bletchley Park and its outstations.
The American bombe was essentially the same as the English bombe, though it functioned better as they were not handicapped by having to make it, as Keen was forced to do owing to production difficulties, on the framework of a three-wheel machine. By late autumn 1943, new American machines were coming into action at the rate of about two a week, the ultimate total being in the region of 125.
Post-war
Building on its wartime experience with secret communication systems, high speed counters and cryptanalytic equipment, NCR became a major post-war force in developing new computing and communications technology.In 1953, chemists Barrett K. Green and Lowell Schleicher of NCR in Dayton submitted a patent "Pressure responsive record materials" for a carbon-less copy paper. This became US Patent 2,730,457 and was commercialized as "NCR Paper."
In February 1953, the company acquired the Computer Research Corporation, after which it created a specialized electronics division. In 1956, NCR introduced its first electronic device, the Class 29 Post-Tronic, a bank machine using magnetic stripe technology. With the General Electric Company, the company manufactured its first transistor-based computer in 1957, the NCR 304. Also in the 1950s NCR introduced MICR and the NCR 3100 accounting machines.
In 1962, NCR introduced the NCR 315 Electronic Data Processing System which included the CRAM storage device, the first automated mass storage alternative to magnetic tape libraries accessed manually by computer operators. The NCR 390 and 500 computers were also offered to customers who did not need the full power of the 315. The NCR 390 accepted four types of input: magnetic ledger cards, punched cards, punched tape, and keyboard entry, with a tape read speed of 400 characters a second.
The company's first all-integrated circuit computer was the Century 100 of 1968. The Century 200 was added in 1970. The line was extended through the Century 300 in 1973. The Century series was followed by the Criterion series in 1976, NCR's first virtual machine system.
During this period, NCR also produced the 605 minicomputer for in-house use. It was the compute engine for the 399 and 499 accounting machines, several generations of in-store and in-bank controllers, and the 82xx/90xx IMOS COBOL systems. The 605 also powered peripheral controllers, including the 658 disk subsystem and the 721 communications processor.
In 1974, scanners and computers developed by NCR marked the first occasion where items with the Universal Product Code was scanned at the checkout of a supermarket, Troy's Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio, a few miles away from NCR's Dayton Headquarters. It was treated as a ceremonial occasion and involved a little bit of ritual. The night before, a team of Marsh's supermarket staff had moved in to put bar codes on hundreds of items in the store while NCR installed their scanners and computers.
In 1982, NCR's Peripheral Products Division in Wichita, Kansas, together with peripheral manufacturer, Shugart Associates, helped propel the computer industry into a new era of intelligent standardized peripheral communications with the development the Small Computer System Interface. The SCSI standard enabled such diverse devices as disks, tapes, printers, and scanners to share a common interface to one or more computer systems in a way that was never before possible and a model for subsequent interfaces to follow. NCR developed the world's first SCSI interface chip, the NCR 5380, based on the SCSI interface standard collaboratively developed. In the third quarter of 1982, NCR announced the release of a 32-bit VLSI processor architecture and chipset called NCR/32. These devices were used in several of their 9x00 and System 10000 computer systems.
By 1986, the count of American mainframe computer manufacturers had dwindled from 8 to 6 and further reduced to 4.
The adoption of the name NCR Corporation occurred in 1974.