Cash Drawer

General stores were growing to match the increased number of transactions that they made each day. As the amount of cash changing hands grew, the business owners had to get more cash drawers and had to hire more employees to run the cash drawers. Having more employees running more cash drawers made it easier for the average employee to steal from their employer. Stealing then became a big problem for employers. James Ritty was born in 1836 and when he was 28 he opened a saloon. As the owner of the saloon he had a problem with his employees stealing from him. He brooded on this problem for a long time. One day he was taking a boat to Europe and he saw a machine that counted the number of times the propeller made a full rotation. He wondered if he could use that to keep his employees from stealing from him. The cash register counts how many times the cash drawer has been opened and it prints 2 receipts, 1 for the business owner and 1 for the buyer. If the employee opens the cash drawer to steal money, the register counts that as one more time the drawer was opened. At the end of the day when the owner is looking at his receipts he will see the drawer has been opened more times than there are receipts, telling him one of his employees has stolen from the cash drawer. And by adding the receipts and comparing it to the amount of money in drawer he can see how much was stolen.