Last week I wrote about being a cash register collector, and I mentioned how National Cash Register was headquartered in Dayton.
After 125 years, NCR is moving its World Headquarters to Georgia.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
The handwriting has been on the wall for years. Most of our politicians are expressing surprise. They are blaming the move on NCR’s upper management being uncooperative.
If only our politicians could pull their heads out of the sand, they might have been able to recognize the handwriting on the wall or, at least have seen the wall.
When the NCR Board of Directors allowed its new leader, an outsider, to operate the company from New York, this alone should have been enough to get everyone’s undivided attention.
That wasn’t the only alarm.
Talk About Off-Premises
Another sounded when upper management moved from Dayton to New York.
Believe it or not, there was a third when 900 manufacturing jobs moved to Georgia.
You would have thought this would have been enough. However, it appears that most were just getting their head out of wherever they had them buried.
It’s sad that a company that has done so much for Dayton is moving, But you can’t blame NCR.
Dayton has not been putting its best foot forward for years.
Management of any company is required to do what is best for the profitability and future of the organization, and I’m sure it wasn’t an easy decision for NCR.
Dayton will recover. However, it won’t be easy. The first step will be to rid the state, county and city of a bunch of inept leaders.
Dayton and the cash register are synonymous, as the cash register was invented, in Dayton, by John Ritter.
Ritter sold his company to John H. Patterson and his brother in 1884. The Patterson family, upon learning the two had purchased the National Manufacturing Company, thought they were nuts. So John tried to sell it back to Ritter, with no success.
Patterson was now determined to make the company successful. And he did. John took the National Manufacturing Company, changed its name to National Cash Register, and the rest is history.
Here are some highlights:
In 1906, Charles F. Kettering designed a cash register powered by an electric motor.
NCR becomes publicly owned in 1926.
1952: NCR acquires the Computer Research Corp., of Hawthorne, CA, which has a line of digital computers for aviation applications.
NCR creates an Electronics Division in 1953.
1957: NCR unveils the first fully transistorized business computer, the NCR 304.
The National Cash Register Co. changes its name to NCR Corp. in 1974.
1991: AT&T acquires NCR for $7.5 billion. NCR exchanges $520 million worth of AT&T stock for the Teradata Corp.
NCR’s name is changed to AT&T Global Information Solutions (GIS) in 1994.
1995: AT&T announces a spin-off of AT&T GIS, and in 1996 the name is changed back to NCR Corp.
NCR spins off Teradata Data Warehousing in 2007 and separates into two businesses.
2009: NCR President and CEO William Nuti confirms the transfer of its Dayton operations to Duluth, GA.
Do you have an NCR story you would like to share?
Email me at pmhenn@sbcglobal.net