The National Cash Register company was established in the late 19th century and grew aggressively in the early 20th century until it dominated the US cash register market. During the Second World war NCR's sophisticated electromechanical engineering and production facilities were employed in fields ranging from gunsights to the design and manufacture of the US versions of the "bombe" cryptanalysis machine.
Perhaps influenced by its wartime work, NCR was early to recognise the significance of electronic computing and data processing and was an early developer of transistorised computer systems. NCR's first large computer was the fully-transistor NCR 304, released in 1957. The NCR 315 system followed in 1962 and is noteworthy for the CRAM, an electromechanical marvel that reminds us of the great problem of fast mass storage in that era.
By the late 1960s IBM was dominant in the US computer market, perhaps as a result of IBM's Thomas Watson using the sales techniques that he'd learned and refined when he'd begun his career working for NCR. The US computer manufacturers of the late 1960s became known as "IBM and the BUNCH" (Burroughs, Unisys, NCR, Control Data & Honeywell) and most of the BUNCH fell by the wayside during the 1970s.
NCR survived and prospered in the 1970s by combining its knowledge and position in the cash register business with its new expertise in computers and data processing. NCR pioneered intelligent cash registers and linked these with store-level computers that could transmit point-of-sale data for central processing. This business remains successful today and while NCR is long out of the mainframe computer business it remains a leading player in point of sale equipment and data processing.
There is an excellent site with data, pictures and presonal stories of NCR computers at The Core Memory. Highly recommended.
The NCR 725 is a special purpose computer, intended to be the central element of a retail store's network of point of sale terminals. It collected and processed point of sale transactions and saved the data on tapes that were sent to the head office mainframe department.
The 725 is interesting to DoPECC for two particular reasons:
The 725 is in storage while data to assist with restoration is searched for.
There is a particular need for:
If any reader has any information that may assist, please send a message via the About/Contact link
The NCR Model 301 Class 796 is a 1970s video terminal with an unusual black-on-white display.
This terminal was originally the operator's terminal for the NCR 725 computer above.
Ths terminal is branded NCR but is in fact an OEM product of ADDS (Applied Digital Data Systems).