In 2018, Amazon opened the world's first supermarket without cash registers and sellers in the United States. The principle of its work is simple. Customers come to the store, take everything they need from the shelves (there are no carts and baskets) and head to the exit. Numerous sensors scan the goods at the moment of removal from the shelf and calculate the amount of purchase. Payment is made at the exit through the mobile application. Fast, convenient and safe.
Such stores today are an exception to the rule. Moreover, it is not a fact that trade will develop in this direction in the future. But for such supermarkets to appear, automation technologies have come a long and difficult way.
The main stages of this path will be described in the article.
Until the mid-19th century, the traditional place to store income in stores were boxes with compartments for bills and coins. They were located at the sellers. The rapid development of industry in the West led to an increase in trade. To cope with the flow of customers, stores began to separate the functions of sellers and cashiers. The former helped the buyer to choose the goods, weighed and packed them. The latter accepted payment. The link between them was the buyer himself, who chose the goods, went to pay for it and returned to pick it up. In large stores it took a lot of time.
In 1875, the American David Brown invented a device that saved time for the purchase. The device was a rope stretched under the ceiling, to which baskets were attached from below. The seller put money for the goods in the basket and sent it to the cashier. He returned the change and the check back in the same way.
On July 13, 1875, Brown received a patent for an invention called "apparatus for transporting goods, cash and other small goods". This date can be considered the beginning of the era of trade automation.
Brown's device was first successfully tested in 1879 in a large furniture store in Massachusetts. The owner of the store William Lamson in 1882 bought from Brown the rights to use the invention. In the same year, Lamson founded the Lamson Cash Railway Company in Boston, within which he improved Brown's system. Ropes were replaced by rails, and hanging baskets - by cars. The repeatedly modernized mechanical "Lamson courier" was used in stores until the mid-20th century.
James Ritty was a successful restaurateur and called himself a seller of real whiskey, good wines and cigars. In his native Dayton, Ohio, he opened the Pony House bar, which was very popular. Located near the train station, the establishment attracted numerous travelers.
Ritty's only problem was the dishonesty of the saloon employees, who often embezzled the proceeds. This affected the business. An incident helped to solve the problem.
In 1878 James Ritty went to Europe by steamer. On the ship, his attention was drawn to a device that automatically counted the number of revolutions of the propeller shaft. The businessman suggested that a similar principle could be applied to create a device that would count payments in a bar.
Returning to the States, James and his brother John implemented this idea. The Ritty brothers patented the first machine for accounting revenue on November 4, 1879. The device had two rows of keys and a clock face with two hands (for dollars and cents).
"Incorruptible cashier Ritty" (that's how the brothers called their invention) was improved twice. First, an indicator appeared that showed the buyer and seller the amount of payment. As a result, it became more difficult to deceive the client. And then Ritti came up with the idea to fix the amount of payment on a paper roll. At the end of the day, the owner could control the number of cash transactions and the amount of each purchase. It was enough to check the records on paper and the amount of money in the cash register.
The Pony House bar began to prosper again: cases of money theft by staff decreased, and the number of customers who came to the bar to see the miracle machine increased.
"Incorruptible cashier" walks the planet
Inspired by their success, James and John decided to open a cash register manufacturing business. Things were going well, but it was difficult to manage both the saloon and the factory. Therefore, the brothers sold their factory for $1000 to Jacob Eckert, who sold porcelain and glassware. Eckert founded the cash register manufacturing company National Manufacturing Company.
One of Eckert's customers was John Patterson, the owner of a mining supplies store. Having a lot of losses, Patterson hoped to improve his business with the help of cash registers. In 1884, Patterson bought the rights to manufacture cash registers for $5000. The man named his company National Cash Register Company (NCR). The device received an important addition - a bell and a drawer for money. Thus, to gain access to the cash drawer, the seller had to record each payment. When the drawer was opened, the bell rang. This sound became a symbol of monetary success.
Subsequently, cash registers gained popularity all over the world. By the beginning of the First World War, NCR had sold more than 1.5 million machines. They could already do much more: they allowed to receive information about the goods sold by departments or sellers, and most importantly - they began to print receipts for customers. It was a real breakthrough.
The appearance of cash registers of that time deserves a special mention. They were real works of art made of precious wood, copper, silver, nickel. Production was simplified and cheapened with the beginning of the First World War.
In the second half of the 20th century, the main manufacturers of cash registers in the world were the Swedish company XYGIN, American Tacc and Sveda, Japanese Japan cash mashine and Casio.
Today the cash register is an integral part of any store.
We buy without sellers. Self-service
Self-service has become a truly revolutionary phenomenon in the history of retail trade. Although it is not directly related to automation, it has created the preconditions for its further development.
Clarence Saunders from Memphis (Tennessee) has been trading since he was 14 years old. Having opened his own business, he invented a new trading system, which he patented and implemented in his Piggly Wiggly store. In the first Piggly Wiggly, which opened on September 6, 1916, the goods were laid out on the shelves in the trading hall. The buyer could take each product and look at it. There were turnstiles at the entrance and exit, and payment was made in cash at the cash register.
In addition to customer access to the goods, Piggly Wiggly introduced a number of innovations:
- The trading floor as a maze. To get to the exit, the buyer walked around the entire store.
- Unified product labeling system. The name, description, weight and price of the goods were written in the same style.
- Shopping baskets - appeared for the first time in Piggly Wiggly, and they were wooden.
- A small number of employees. Cashiers, packers and packers of goods worked in the store. The customer was alone in the sales area.
- The staff was dressed in uniform. This created a sense of order and cleanliness among customers.
- Refrigerators for perishable products. This made it possible to significantly expand the assortment.
Customers appreciated the new form of trade. In the first year of operation, Saunders opened nine stores in Memphis. At the beginning of the Great Depression, the entrepreneur was forced to sell the Piggly Wiggly chain.
The father of supermarkets is another American - Michael Cullen. The former grocer opened a self-service store in a large garage. Nearby he arranged free parking for cars. In two years, Cullen opened eight such stores with a total revenue of $ 6 million per year.
A major step in the development of self-service was the introduction in 1937 of a metal trolley on wheels for shopping instead of or in addition to traditional baskets.
By the middle of the 20th century, supermarkets became very popular in America, and then - in the world. Large retail chains appeared. Among them Walmart is one of the largest on the planet.
Clothing for goods (packaging and containers)
The development and spread of self-service stores required new approaches to product packaging. The task is to make sure that the packaging of goods not only does not slow down trade, but on the contrary - allows it to be more dynamic. And at the same time to comply with the necessary hygiene standards.
Strong cardboard instead of glass
In the early 1920s, the Swede Reuben Rausing, who studied in New York, saw self-service grocery stores in America and came to the conclusion that the future of food retailing lies in primary packaging. That is, inseparable from the product until the moment of its consumption, which protects it from damage.
According to sources, the idea to make hermetic packaging for milk was suggested to Rausing by his wife. She suggested pouring milk into the packaging continuously, using a moving cylindrical sleeve, by analogy with the manufacture of sausages. In this case, the ingress of oxygen into the product is almost impossible, and therefore reduces the likelihood of spoilage. As a result, the optimal material for such packaging was invented - cardboard covered with polyethylene. And the ideal shape was the tetrahedron.
In 1951, Rusing founded the company AB Tetra Pak. Since then, the triumphant spread of the packaging of the same name began, first in Sweden and then in the world. Today, a huge number of products are sold in practical and hygienic packaging with Swedish roots.
"Beer cans" - the forerunners of the aluminum can
For the first time beer in metal cans made of steel appeared on sale in 1935. However, this can weighed 35 ounces (992 grams) and was opened with a special knife like a can opener.
In 1958, an aluminum can was invented, which is opened with the help of a ring, and in 1975, cans of modern design appeared, with the lid pushed inside.
The emergence of practical and compact packaging allowed manufacturers and retail chains to significantly reduce the cost of product logistics. Now instead of reusable metal boxes, milk, juices, beer and carbonated drinks were delivered in the form of stacks packed in plastic film.
Vending - a story with age
The sale of goods through vending machines has a long history. Scientists claim that the first primitive attempts to sell goods without the help of a seller and cashier were made in the Roman Empire. Parishioners of temples could buy holy water on their own by pressing a coin on the lever that opened access to the goods.
The next stage of evolution of vending machines was in the 17th century in England. In taverns, they sold tobacco for smoking. A little later, vending machines for selling postcards appeared on the streets. In 1822, a newspaper vending machine was invented in the same England.
The invention of the saturator made it possible to establish automated trade in soda, which was a real breakthrough in this direction. Subsequently, vending machines learned to sell cigarettes and chewing gum, hygiene products, tea and coffee, beer and juices, newspapers and sweets.
The first programs of goods accounting
In the second half of the 20th century, cash registers were used in stores and retail outlets around the world. The devices themselves were constantly being improved. Manufacturers began to introduce electronic components controlled by primitive software into their design.
The new generation devices allowed to enhance security and control over financial transactions, but were limited in functions.
In August 1973, IBM released IBM 3650 and 3660 trading systems. They were a powerful server that served as a store controller and could control up to 128 IBM cash registers.
This was the first commercial application of client-server technology with simultaneous integration into a local area network (LAN) and the possibility of remote initialization. By mid-1974, IBM systems were installed in Pathmark stores in New Jersey and Dillard's department stores.
In 1974, the company of entrepreneur William Brobeck presented the first cash register system with microprocessor control, created for the McDonald's restaurant chain. Each cash register in the restaurant had its own device that displayed the order for the customer. The names of dishes were entered using digital keys. When the customer was ready to pay, the "Total" button calculated the purchase, including tax.
Around this time, the trade terminology includes the phrase Point of Sale and its abbreviation - the prototype of modern POS-terminals. Hardware systems for automating the work of cashiers began to be called POS-systems.
In 1979, the owner of a New York cafe Gene Mosher introduced a POS-system based on Apple II computers in his institution. The complex accepted orders in the restaurant hall and immediately sent the data to the kitchen.
In 1986, Mosher introduced the first graphical point-of-sale software with a touch interface under the ViewTouch trademark. The system had a color touch interface with widgets of menu items.
In the future, manufacturers worked to standardize the development of computerized POS-systems and simplify their connection.
At the turn of the 80s and 90s, manufacturers of POS-systems began to introduce magnetic stripe readers in their complexes. This allowed customers to pay for purchases with a credit card, and stores - to hold promotions and implement discount programs.
Lines will tell everything about the product
In 1948, Bernard Silver, a graduate student at Drexel University in Philadelphia, overheard the head of a local grocery chain asking one of the deans to develop a system that would automatically read information about a product as it was being checked out.
The idea piqued Silver's interest, and he and his friends Norman Woodland and Jordin Johanson began researching different marking systems. Their first system used ultraviolet ink, which was expensive and short-lived.
Norman Woodland did not give up on the idea and decided to use Morse code for the identification system. Later he wrote: "I only extended the dots and dashes downwards and made them into narrow and wide lines". To read the strokes, it was decided to use optical sound recording technology, the same as in the film industry.
Woodland and Silver filed an application for the invention, which was granted on October 7, 1952. In 1952, the friends sold the patent to Philco, which resold the patent to RCA.
The idea was successful more than 20 years later. On June 26, 1974, the first purchase using a bar code was made in the Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio. The product was a pack of Wrigley chewing gum.
Modern retail continues to actively implement innovative solutions that significantly reduce manual monotonous work and at the same time improve the quality and efficiency of customer service.
Innovative technologies are implemented thanks to numerous smart devices (automatic scales, scanners, printers, etc.) and software that is constantly being improved.
Domestic programmers develop equipment and programs for trade and services, taking into account all the factors that entrepreneurs have to face. Warehouse, financial and management accounting becomes simple and clear.
And mobile technologies today allow you to store all the information directly in your smartphone.
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