A 1974 McDonald's till stored key numbers only as multiples of three
Long before tablets on shop counters, a McDonald's cash register built in 1974 ran on an Intel 8008 chip, kept three copies of every important figure and could keep a whole restaurant trading if one of its two computers died. The checkout has quietly been one of retail's most demanding pieces of software ever since.
The point of sale is simply the moment and place where a purchase is completed: the merchant works out what is owed, takes payment and usually hands over a receipt, printed or digital. Seen from the shopper's side, marketers call the same patch of floor the point of purchase and design displays and offers around it. Because returns and orders pass through it too, some prefer the phrase point of service.
Early electronic registers were closed boxes with limited abilities. In August 1973 IBM released its 3650 and 3660 store systems, essentially a mainframe acting as a store controller for up to 128 registers. It was the first commercial use of client-server design and local-network backup, and by mid-1974 it ran in Pathmark supermarkets in New Jersey and in Dillard's department stores. That same year William Brobeck and Associates built the McDonald's system, with a button for every menu item, a Grill key to start another order mid-transaction and a Total key that added sales tax for nearly any American jurisdiction.
Touchscreens arrived in 1986, when Gene Mosher showed his ViewTouch software on an Atari 520ST at Fall Comdex in Las Vegas; it let owners set up menu buttons without low-level programming. IBM launched its 468x terminals that year, and in 1993 based its 4690 operating system on FlexOS, a line later sold to Toshiba in 2014. By 2009 a retailer could expect to pay about 4,000 dollars per checkout lane for a complete system.
The appeal is control. Prices tied to product codes make shelf tags unnecessary, and discounts, loyalty points and stock levels update together because every module is linked. That interlinking is what makes the software hard: a grocer needs warnings about expiring stock, some firms want first-in-first-out accounting reports, a restaurant wants split bills and table service, and a spa needs appointment histories. Compatibility can bite too; when a Microsoft Access database broke after a Windows upgrade, some businesses retreated to Windows XP.
Source: Point of sale
