cathoderaydude
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Video: Intro to Cash Registers
🕑 Added 2025-11-16 19:00:49 +0000 UTCHey! It's the next video in the previously created series! And it's not the one you expected! Probably!
I explain all my reasoning in the video so I won't rehash it here, but in short, this was the last of several different ideas that I tried and discarded before settling on this one. I know I'm not expected to explain the delays in my production process (i just signed up for hbomberguy's patreon and it's extremely funny seeing him make the same mistake i have of Ever Saying What I'm Doing Before Finishing It, let alone Saying Something Is Almost Done And Will Be Out Soon) but for what it's worth, I would have had something out four weeks ago if I hadn't kept looking at the scripts and thinking "wow, this is incomprehensible." This 1:47:00 video is the easier watch than what I would have produced if I hadn't stopped myself and gone back to square one.
Mind you, I am kind of downplaying the utter chaos of my life lately. Among other things: I had to stop myself from making a post about this several times, because I decided I was too emotional to say anything informative nor actionable, but I had to put a cat to sleep a few weeks ago - and then the very next week another cat got deathly ill. I spent a fortune making her better, and now it seems like she's still sick, maybe? Or maybe not? And either way there's no real explanation as to why? So this has been consuming an enormous amount of my mental and emotional bandwidth and making it incredibly difficult to concentrate on anything.
All the same, job's a job and quality matters, so, given the huge breadth of this topic, do please let me know if you spot any errors. I am aware of a couple minor ones (like the map of payment methods in europe that technically only counts travelers out of the UK - but since the correct map makes the exact same point, I consider it moot) and there's also probably some regionalisms, e.g. maybe checks are still more popular in some places than where I've lived, but I think taken as a whole it's close to the mark.
Comments
epic__beard
An hour and three quarters long video on cash register operation? No thanks. Oh, it's by Gravis? Clear my schedule, I'm watching. As usual, you gave a great breakdown of what some old tech is, how it worked, and dove into the why of each. I really enjoy this stuff and I'm so glad you're doing it. I never thought I'd want to know so much about cash registers, or POS, but now I do.
Elsie Hupp
Not on the topic of cash registers but on the topic of the video production: Something I find mildly visually distracting in the set design is how the row of bookcases in the background doesnโt have a visually continuous horizontal line across the top because the vertical side boards of the bookcases extend beyond the top of each bookcase. If you want to have a cleaner look, you could create a countertop using a long, continuous board and a 1x2 (or bullnose) lip, stained in basically the same color as the bookcases, which would create visually stronger, visually heavier horizontal line. Of course, you may not consider this worth the effort; I just personally enjoy projects like this myself.
Riemann Zeta-Jones
I apologize if this question is incoherent; I'm posting under the influence
Riemann Zeta-Jones
I've had a question for years that I've tried to find the answer to, but have never been satisfied with one. Knowing what I know about computer science, I didn't understand how the technology existed in 1970 to perform what appears to be image recognition (albeit at resolution measured in single digits with one bit per pixel). I know how you'd implement it today, and I believe I understand how it was done in the 90s, but before computers could do, like, efficient linear algebra?
Pietro Gagliardi
I know I'm late to the party but: in response to my comment on the previous video, I'm now extremely conflicted about the ethics of picking that simplesale project back up ever... What would a fair system look like in a world where cashiers are paid fairly (if even to the point where tipping isn't needed)?
Mat Fordon
I am so glad that everyone just wants you to rip on whatever your interests are, regardless of what it is. I think that people just want you to find the topics that drive your passionate curiosity to the max, because you produce content that is more entertaining. Also, I've been in a Discord server run by someone who has been restoring mechanical cash registers for a few years. I also got to run a few checks while working at K-Mart in 2006/2007 on IBM POS 100 systems..... I'm also only like 4 years older than you and have at least 1 checkbook.... from acquiring a set of them in 2008.
abbeydokie
literally no other content creator as of the last few years has been able to keep my attention span locked in like i was with this video. maybe its cause i'm stuck in retail hell and constantly look at the machines and computers behind the scenes to keep my mind off the mind-numbing tasks my job requires lol. not to ramble too much, but my job still has an IBM 3153 terminal in the pricing office that is STILL functional and connected via serial. its dog slow, no one uses it, and support doesn't want it because they can't just give it to another store to use. so when i get to learn about old ass machines that used to rule the roost, i get very very very excited to sit my ass down and learn. so thank you for the wonderful content over the years. you make this appalachian trans woman very happy every time you upload, so i hope that means something on an individual level. and i'm sorry for your loss as well. <3
Christopher Davies
Since floating point numbers are approximations that concentrate most of their precision in part of their range most amenable to the human mind, this makes sense. The terrain going crazy at far edges of the minecraft world is a fun easter egg, however the taxman does not appreciate fun easter eggs.
Will Dunn
Oh, worth mentioning Gravis - the part of the new video talking about entering 199 and the register or adding machine automatically adding the decimal to make it "$1.99" made me think of this. When I was working at a restaurant POS integration startup about 8 years ago, one thing that I think most of them do, and that we had to do, was treat all money in pennies. Nothing costs $15.49. It costs 1549 cents. So, I think this is kind of mechanically implied for cash registers, but I definitely saw POS software where it was explicit - the decimal is basically just a UI display element for human consumption and is effectively ignored in the software. I dunno, I guess people who make POS software just hate floats and always want to use ints. I'm pretty sure even the functions that did stuff that would create floats, like calculating tax, was just of the variety "takes integer as input, does calculation and rounding inside the function, returns amount of tax as integer" so that the running total was always an integer.
