Decided to move this thread here instead of the US coin forum. Another coin cashier, same era, not as fancy.
My company is a dealer in money handling machines and has been in business since the early fifties. These and others that I will post are on display in our office.
Back in 1970, I went to work for a Agri-store in North Carolina. I had just gotten out of the army and went to work with them. I had an adding machine similar to the one in the picture, except it was electric. I kept track of all the tobacco they processed. I worked there for about 5 months and then went to college. I retired from being an accountant for 30+ years. Finally, we used a ten key calculator. It is with fond memories of working for the Agri-store with the calculating machine hours on end.
Each column is a denomination. The first column on the left is the cent column. The second column is the 10 to 90 denomination. The third column is the dollar column, then the Tenth column.... etc. After you put your numbers in, the manual calculator has a crank on the side that you pull down to enter your number, then you put in your next number should you be adding columns. It's kind of hard to describe it. I spent 2 days and nights and on my own time to learn how to use it, just as I had to learn on a 10 key calculator. It was hard, but when I finally got the hang of it, I enjoyed using it, instead of entering the figures on a sheet of paper and manually add a column or subtract figures. I was 22 at the time and that was 50 years ago. Just as I learned many things 50 years ago, they are now antiquated.
I found a video on youtube that pretty much shows how it works. Looks like all that needs to be done is one button pushed for coin change. Pretty simple now that I can see what it does.
Shucks, most of the kids today would be lost trying to use the old mechanical cash registers that were used in the grocery stores of the 60's & 70's. The cash registers today tell them how much change to give back to the customer. Back then, you had to figure it out on your own.
Even with the registers telling them how much change to give back I've seen some struggle to figure out what coins add up to that amount.
They have it setup now in some places where the change comes out automatically so that 1) the cashier doesn't have to take time to count back the change, and 2) eliminate human error in giving back the incorrect change. Thing is, that automatic cashier machine didn't require electricity and/or computer programs to work. Now if there is a power outage and/or issues with the software operating systems (constantly having to update the system hardware and/or software which ultimately costs money to do) and/or connection, they will be SOL. Like every two or so years, you have to buy a new iphone because they start not working/holding a charge properly. My grandparents had three home phones in their house which all worked perfectly for over 50 years. And now every two or so years cell phones need to be replaced. Ridiculous.
Those are the ones we sell and service now. Other issues include bent or sticky coins and customers that ignore low coin warnings.
Are the new ones from Japan by any chance? I used to visit Japan quite often 15 or so years ago and the first time I saw the auto change back from a live cashier was during my visits to Japan back then. I thought it was interesting, handing a 10,000 yen bill to the cashier and all of my change (even the paper currency) coming out of a little machine near me. The only thing the cashier does with the currency is feed it into this little slot at the computer register, much like when we deposit bills at the ATM. It seems that technology is working it's way over here in some places. I've not seen it yet in my area, but I'm sure it's over here in some places and coming to a place near me at any time now.
The only place I shop that have those self checkout kiosk's is in Home Depot and Lowes, and I do not use them. I make my purchases with the actual employees at the registers.
