Playing with history

By history...I mean a 1929 cash register.  It may sound boring but it was pretty cool.  Especially since it was accompanied by a description from the great-grandson of the person who purchased it back in 1929.

We were at our local jeweler, Jolly's in Raleigh, NC.  We've been in and out of the store a number of times and for some reason today was the first day that I noticed this vintage cash register.  I totally should have noticed it before since it stands over 5' tall.  The metal register part of it isn't that tall.  Instead it sits on a beautiful mahogany cabinet that houses the cash drawers as well as some storage drawers.  This thing is huge but it is also a wonderful combination of functional machinery and stunning furniture.

The register itself has a larger than normal number of numeric keys with amounts ranging from cents up to 900.  It has a row of keys for the different jewelry departments such as diamonds, watches, repair, gold, etc.  It has a few keys to indicate the form of payment which were cash, charge, and credit (store not card).  Finally, it had a column of keys from A to K which were the keys assigned to the different sales staff. 

I was standing in front of the cash register admiring all of the different keys when up walks the owner of the store.  He told me to choose a dollar amount and punch it in...so I did.  I next had to choose the department, form of payment, and my sales person letter.  I entered in a $950 diamond cash purchase and became sales person 'K' (of course...for Kate).  He then told me to punch in the big black button...so I did.  It totaled the purchase in large numbers at the top of the machine and then popped open (to my surprise) one of the mahogany drawers in the cabinet below.

How cool was that?  I just used a cash register that somebody else first used over 80 years ago.  Even better than that was the time that the owner, and great-grandson of the original owner spent with us.  He told us loads about the register itself...it was in use up until the mid-70s...they just had it repaired within the past couple of years...it is fully functional today with the exception of the printer because they can no longer get the ribbon printer ink nor the register paper roll...it weighs a ton (remember I said mahogany).  He also told us about the history of the safes in the store and a bunch of other interesting information about the history of the store.

I love shopping locally.  I especially love shopping locally when the store has this sort of history and they are so willing to share it with you.  I really hope that in the current environment of chain stores that these local stores stay in business so that somebody else can play with that cash register in another 80 years.