“Cha-ching!”: why the cash register came to ring

ABSTRACT

Despite the present-day prevalence of digital payment technologies, the iconic sound of the mechanical cash register – “cha-ching” – still serves as a sonic shorthand for profit and success in popular culture. Given these associations, it may surprise some to learn that the cash register bell was initially employed as a surveillance mechanism, entangled in (and capitalising on) rising social tensions of its late nineteenth-century invention. In exploring the history of the cash register bell, this essay highlights the role of sound as a dynamic and divisive emblem of American commerce which can signify far more than financial gain.

KEYWORDS:

• Surveillance
• labour
• commerce
• listening
• machine sound

Notes

1. You can listen to this Visa sound here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaB4n_wWWYs.

2. You can listen to this Mastercard sound here: https://youtube.com/shorts/WVWgzsTZcJ8?si=n09PSiXn214pvIQa.

3. You can listen to this Apple wallet sound here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8f4uQEBg_w.

4. US Patent No. 271,363. J. Ritty & J. Birch “Cash Register and Indicator”, patented January 30, 1883.

5. US Patent No. 502,353. L. Ehrlich “Cash Register”, patented August 1, 1893.

6. Some sonic innovation came in the addition of a phonograph, appearing in three patents from this era – E.F. Roberts’s 1892 “Cash Register and Indicator”, O.K. Sletto’s 1909 “Attachment for Cash Registers”, and W. H. Muzzy’s 1909 “Cash Register” – with use-cases such as reading aloud the amount punched in and offering a vehicle to market products. However, the addition of a phonograph seems to have been an idea largely left in the patents rather than becoming a mainstay like the bell (perhaps these inventors were just ahead of their time, we are well accustomed to hearing prices read aloud today when we use self-checkouts).

7. YouTube user emccabe1964 has uploaded a range of videos operating late 19th and early 20th century cash registers, including multi-drawer registers. You can hear an example of a two drawer register here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/llkUXxpIo20 a five drawer register here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBPU4wxFR4w and a nine-drawer register here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpmuzgx1eV4.

8. This kind of nested bell technology had been used for centuries by this point, particularly in clocks. See, for example: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/199759 a Fromanteel Longcase clock ca.1690–94 with pair of nested bells; the larger bell is struck on the hour and the smaller bell is struck at half-past. Or, for an example with many more bells, see “The Musical Fromanteel” ca. 1663–65, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD9fMddqIGk.

9. There are a few news articles where the sound of the cash register is said to have alerted authorities to a robbery taking place (a more literal thief catcher), such as a story in The Chicago Daily Tribune from November 30, 1900, which notes, ‘The ringing of a cash register bell in a saloon at 14 Clark street attracted the attention of Policeman Meyers yesterday morning, and resulted in the arrest of two youthful burglars”.

10. For example, a clerk would make a fifty-cent sale but register it as a seventy-five-cent sale to ensure the cash drawer and the internal log didn’t balance. (Crowther 1923, 93).

11. The National Cash Register Company had an estimated 95% domestic market share by 1905 (Friedman 1998, 579).

12. An advertisement for the National Cash Register Company in The Morning Oregonian cites the formation of “The National Inspections Company” to offer “reports weekly or monthly or when desired by the owners, on the registers or any of their employees operating them”, December 7, 1889, 7. However, J. H. Patterson is quoted in Crawthorn (1923) as using Pinkerton detectives with no mention of “The National Inspections Company”.

13. This rhetoric is common across cash register sales literature, particularly NCR’s literature. An 1884 pamphlet from NCR agents Johnson & Ingalls calls the register, “a guarantee that their business is properly conducted, and an accurate account rendered of all cash received”, an 1893 edition of the NCR magazine The Hustler calls it “the wonderful money saving system that is enabling thousands of other storekeepers to become rich” stating, “it stops the leaks in business”, a 1910 advert in the The Saturday Evening Post calls it, “Protection For the Millions” citing, “Nearly fifty million dollars are protected every day by out registers”, a 1913 advert in Collier’s calls it “Business Protection at Your Fingertips”.

14. Here, we could consider the operation of Melvin Seemen’s understanding of worker alienation through powerlessness, (1959); the clerks cannot stop the machine from ringing regardless of whether they process the correct sale amount.

15. Their understanding becomes all the more pressing in our time of “smart” technologies which uphold surveillance capitalism (Amsellem 2023; Zuboff 2019).

16. I am adopting the terms “earwitnessing” and “eavesdropping” as politically different acts as outlined by Bijsterveld 2023.

17. “Good Business after ‘Tavern’s’ Dedication.” The New York Times, August 4, 1904, 7.

18. Coca-Cola advertisement The Practical Druggist and Review of Reviews, 1917, 35(5), 67.

19. The American Florist, January 18, 1919, 20.

20. The Electrical News January 1, 1919, 23.

21. Such as Mr Krabs singing “Feeling of Greed” in the episode “Selling Out” from the cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants, Season 4 Episode 65, clip available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np6KDT8nsX8.

22. As reported by Built With: https://trends.builtwith.com/shop/country/United-States.

23. Though the traditional political analysis of people silenced by those in power who are allowed to make noise is figurative here; the clerks are (perhaps ironically) silenced, or at least flattened, by the noise. Their individuality is drowned out by the bell.

24. This statistic comes from the “2021 FDIC National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households”, available at: https://www.fdic.gov/analysis/household-survey/index.html There are many reasons a person may choose not to use a bank, but it is commonly attributed to incomes not meeting thresholds for “fee free” accounts/high and unpredictable fees for having low balances, and lack of access to banking services. Those without a bank account are also more likely to use more expensive financial services, such as payday loans and check cashing services, see: https://www.gao.gov/blog/more-7-million-u.-s.-households-have-no-bank-account.-why The COVID-19 pandemic seems to have accelerated this transition to a largely cashless culture which shuts out the un(der)baned. Efforts to minimise social contact alongside concerns about the safety of handling cash led to an increase in contactless payment options, online purchasing, and pre-ordering for curb-side pick-up. See: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/17/digital-payments-soared-during-the-pandemic-and-are-here-to-stay.html.

25. Holger Schulze brings Giorgio Agamben’s materialist take on Foucault’s concept of the dispositive into dialogue with the role of sound and listening in what Schulze conceptualises as the three layers/functions/demands of control for contemporary consumer citizens: admission, presence, documentation (197–202). In this, he notes the power in “the silencing dispositive” which he argues is intrinsic to contemporary society: “this dispositive silences the activities of unwanted or rejected consumer citizens, their admission, their presence, and their documentation” (203). Thinking about sound and listening in this context provides powerful language for understanding how something as seemingly innocuous as a payment terminal sound is performing this silencing for those marginalised by contemporary financial institutions and surrounding commercial infrastructure.

26. Zelizer argues that the social shaping of money creates multiple “currencies” within social networks, such as a housekeeping allowance or a monetary gift, which breaks apart “ostensibly homogeneous” money into scaled economies (202). Dodd highlights how the 2008 financial crash broke apart money’s abstract illusion of “thingness” for many people, arguing for money to be understood as a dynamic social process, “a nonplace where form and idea endlessly coalesce”(394).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kate Mancey

Kate Mancey is a PhD candidate in music at Harvard University. Her research focuses on the intersections of music, technology, and society, across various periods and genres. Her PhD thesis, “The Technophonic Everyday” examines the role of sound in human-technology relationships, highlighting the significance of “tuning in” to the seemingly mundane technologies of our daily lives.