Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times  Details of the first electronic register design from the National Cash Register Company in Dayton, Ohio.  Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times  LEFT BEHIND Main Street during the morning rush hour in Dayton, where NCR employed about 1,200 people as of last June.  Every 15 minutes the chiming bells of the Deeds Carillon mark time’s passage in Dayton. Their ever-repeating song reminds the city of its deep connection to the NCR Corporation, formerly known as National Cash Register, for generations known here as The Cash.  The carillon, a 151-foot tower of limestone and steel, was a gift from a former NCR chief executive and his wife. It sits beside a boulevard named after the eccentric man who founded NCR, not far from other NCR touchstones: an office building here, a former warehouse there, and acres and acres of land.  As those bells tolled one day last June, the company, which specializes in automated teller machines and other self-service devices, announced a “major investment in innovation and people,” though not the people of Dayton. NCR stunned the city of its birth with the news that it was moving its world headquarters to suburban Atlanta.  The decision broke a bond dating to 1884, when John H. Patterson began a cash register company here. That bond tightened as Patterson developed a reputation for ruthless dismissals and eccentric benevolence (having employees weighed, for example, to monitor their health); as NCR helped save Dayton from the great flood of 1913; as technological advances and missed opportunities led to gleeful expansion and painful reduction.  It’s all just history now, a stipulation in a contentious divorce.  The company said its public goodbye from the safety of 500 miles, in Atlanta, where Bill Nuti, the NCR chief executive, and Gov. Sonny Perdue  whose state had promised a lucrative incentive package  posed for photographs. The images galled Dayton, given Ohio’s contention that Mr. Nuti had sidestepped several invitations from its governor since 2007 to discuss NCR’s needs and desires.  Simply put, said Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, the company’s behavior was “shamefully irresponsible.”  But Mr. Nuti said last week that Ohio had been given a fair chance  or, perhaps, fair warning. He also noted that the NCR of today has 22,000 employees around the world, and that by the time of the break-up announcement it had more employees in Georgia than the 1,200 it had in Ohio.  As a result, Mr. Nuti said, the practicality of Dayton demanded a hard look. Transportation costs were high, and flights to and from the airport often required “multiple hops” for customers and employees. And attracting top talent was a struggle, he said. “We had a very difficult time recruiting people to live and work in Dayton.”  True, downtown Dayton is profoundly challenged. And true, its main airport simply cannot match Atlanta’s vast offering of nonstop flights.  But Dayton chafes at the backwater implication. The metropolitan region is expanding, the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is booming, and the good quality of life might look even better from the rearview mirror of a car stuck in Atlanta traffic.  In addition, Dayton is within a 90-minute drive of Cincinnati and Columbus, the home of Ohio State University. To suggest that talent is not already here and cannot be attracted here is “insulting,” said Ellen Belcher, the editorial page editor of The Dayton Daily News.  And by the way: Doesn’t 125 years count for something?  Mr. Fisher, who is running for the United States Senate, said NCR had a “moral obligation” to give its home state a fair chance. And once the company decided to relocate, he said, it had a second obligation to explain that decision to the people of Dayton  “to look them straight in the eye.”  But it seems now that NCR began winking back in 2005, when its new C.E.O., Mr. Nuti, did not move to Dayton as was initially required by his contract. (“Serious family issues,” he said.) While civic leaders did not expect Mr. Nuti to make the Monday meetings of the Rotary Club, they soon came to see him as a brash New Yorker harboring disdain for the modest Midwest.  One example: NCR was a dues-paying member of the Dayton Development Coalition, a business-advocacy group, until Mr. Nuti took control. After that, Jim Leftwich, the coalition’s upbeat president, said, “It became difficult to reach out to them and hear back from them.”  Another example: Mr. Fisher said that he and Gov. Ted Strickland have sought meetings with the chief executives of the state’s top companies to encourage expansion and head off problems. Of the dozens he has dealt with, he said, only one never returned his calls: Mr. Nuti.  Mr. Nuti countered that he had donated a “substantial portion of personal money to Dayton charities.” He also emphasized that he has responsibilities throughout the world, and does not “involve myself in many, many locations.”  Of course, pieces often come together after things fall apart.  In 2007, NCR opened executive offices in New York City, Mr. Nuti’s home turf. In August 2008, as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution later reported, Mr. Nuti had a private half-hour meeting in Georgia with Governor Perdue, who presented him with a golf putter engraved with the state logo.
The reasons for a cash register manufacturer’s decision to leave Ohio after 125 years ring hollow in Dayton.