The saloon keeper who changed the world

The word of the day is peculation, which is the dishonest appropriation of public funds or property entrusted to one’s care. Synonyms include misappropriation, defalcation and Congress.

I came across the word in researching a saloon keeper named James Ritty who along with his brother, John, patented the first cash register on this date in 1879. Their invention led to the creation of National Cash Register, which led to the saving of the gasoline-powered automobile.

Ritty was raised a farmboy, which meant the first thing he wanted to do when he became of age was to leave the farm.

He opened the first saloon in Dayton in 1871. It was a fine and popular establishment that did not make as much money as he thought it should. His speculation was peculation. He thought his bartenders were congressmen in disguise, ripping him off right and left.

On a steamboat trip to Europe, he noticed a mechanism that counted how many times the ship’s propeller went around. This inspired him to make a cash register to record sales and keep bartenders honest. Could this answer his woes?

Georgi Dalakov wrote, “Back in Dayton, James immediately tossed the question to his brother John. Two of James’ brothers (there were five brothers), Sebastian (1827-1891) and John (1834-1913), also were of an inventive turn of mind. The eldest brother, Sebastian, took out a number of patents on farm implements. John, who was a mechanic by trade, carried on the inventive tradition of the family. Among other things (like a wheel, railroad car coupling, etc.), he patented several machines for the hulling of green corn and set up a canning factory in which they were used.”

They opened a small factory to make Ritty’s Incorruptible Cashier. It did not sell well. After a few years, Ritty decided he was a better saloon keeper than he was an industrialist. The two brothers sold the company to John Henry Patterson, who changed the company’s name to National Cash Register.

Computer History reported, “NCR began in 1884 when John Patterson began to make mechanical cash registers. It was widely regarded as a ‘high tech’ company and even made some of its resources available to code-breaking groups during World War 2.”

Patterson had owned a dry goods operation and he too suffered peculation from his staff.

Company-Histories.com said, “When Patterson learned of a device called a cash register, he ordered two from James and John Ritty, who had recently established a Dayton, Ohio-based company called National Cash Register. In 1882 the Rittys sold part of their company and renamed it the National Manufacturing Company.

“Patterson, meanwhile, was reaping such financial rewards from the use of his cash registers that he bought stock in the Rittys’ company. He eventually joined the board of directors and suggested that the company use nationwide marketing techniques to sell its cash registers. Patterson’s ideas met with opposition, and in 1884 he bought additional stock and took control of the company.

“Once president, Patterson named the company National Cash Register Company and moved quickly to change NCR’s emphasis from manufacturing to sales. His interest in sales led to the concept of quotas and guaranteed sales territories for agents. Patterson also provided his agents with sales seminars, training brochures, and scripted sales pitches, and required them to wear white shirts and dark suits. All of these practices were new at the time but soon became widespread at other companies.”

The company weathered the Panic of 1893, an economic downturn that rivaled the Great Depression. He took out competitors and defended his patents vigorously. The business prospered.

Company-Histories said, “In 1906 a young inventor named Charles F. Kettering gave the company its first electric cash register. Kettering, who had been hired just two years earlier, also developed NCR’s Class 1000 machine, a low-cost redesigned register that remained in production for nearly 40 years with only minor changes. Kettering left the company in 1909 to join the automotive industry.”

Join? Kettering revolutionized the automobile industry.

ETWH reported, “American cars of the time used non-rechargeable dry cells to provide the electricity that sent a shower of sparks into the combustion cylinder to ignite the air/fuel mixture. The batteries had to be replaced every few hundred miles. Kettering adapted the magnetic relay from his cash register into a device that would produce one spark from a spark plug instead of a shower, decreasing the drain on the battery and increasing its electrical systems.

“Kettering and a handful of associates, including NCR’s general manager Col. Edward A. Deeds, formed the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (Delco) to commercialize the invention. In July 1909, Cadillac purchased 8,000 units. Delco was on its way, and Kettering soon left NCR to devote his full attention to Delco and automotive electrical systems.

“Kettering next turned his attention, as did many others, to what seemed clearly one of the major weaknesses of the gasoline-powered automobile—the hand crank that had to be inserted in the front of the car and manually rotated with considerable force to start the car. Not only was this a nuisance that kept some, especially women, from operating cars, it also was dangerous—there were many reported incidents of the crank kicking back, leading to broken arms, broken jaws, and worse.”

Kettering’s invention made him and his customers—automobile companies—rich.

ETWH said, “Cadillac introduced the self-starter in its 1912 model.

“Over the next few years, automobile manufacturers across the industry adopted the innovation; even Henry Ford began offering it on his best-selling Model-T in 1919. Kettering biographer Stuart W. Leslie argued that the improved battery ignition and the self-starter assured that the gasoline-powered automobile would be the dominant form of personal transportation in the United States. The sales of electric-powered cars, never more than a niche, peaked with a 1 percent market share in 1913, and were largely gone from the market by the early 1920s.”

Patterson made out.

Kettering made out.

But don’t worry about James Ritty. He cashed in his cash registers to build the best saloon in Ohio.

Andrew Walsh reported, “In 1882 he opened a new bar at 123 S. Jefferson St, which came to be known as the Pony House. Ritty’s aspirations for the new saloon were much grander than his previous establishments.

“For one, he hired wood carvers from the Barney and Smith Car Works, a major Dayton rail car manufacturer that would later be decimated by the 1913 flood, to craft a bar out of 5,400 pounds of Honduras mahogany. Ornate details on the 30-foot long bar included several carved animals including an owl. The saloon was also ‘built so that the left and right sections looked like the interior of a passenger railcar, featuring giant mirrors set back about a foot with curved, hand-tooled leather covered elements at the top and curved bezel mirror-encrusted sections on each side.’”

He didn’t resent Patterson’s success. They became friends.

The saloon outlasted them both but time and urban renewal spare no one. Developers demolished the building that housed the saloon in 1967.

Walsh said, “Fortunately the bar was saved, thanks to a painstaking effort by William Eicher of United Moving & Storage. Eicher took photographs of the bar, removed it, and then stored it so it could later be completely reassembled. And fortunately it was, with its new home becoming Jay’s Seafood restaurant in the Oregon District where you can still marvel at it today while enjoying a fine whiskey like those purveyed by Ritty many years ago.”

So on this anniversary of Ritty’s patent, hoist a drink to the man who fought peculation, which eventually helped lead to computers and the end of cranking your engine.