Patenting The Future - McCaskey Innovates The Register

On March 17, 1942 two patents were filed at the U.S. Patent office to Fletcher L. West and Harold W. Clark on behalf of The McCaskey Register Company.  These patents were major innovations in the production of cash registers.

In the above and side pictures you see the designs for the patents submitted by Harold W. Clark.  This patent was for a design of split keyboard on the McCaskey Cash Register. The need for a split total mechanism was made evident by the previous designs on cash registers. If you look at figure 8 you will see that some registers would not add in the credit sale in dollars or in merchandise.  Where did it go? how did the register keep track of gallons of gas or merchandise sold?

In figure 9 showed how the desired result could only be obtained by two seperate operations.  Figure 10 however showed showed the same transactions carried out on the improved McCaskey machine.  The invention in these drawings gives totals for all material items on the left hand side and the total of only the cash items on the right side even though they are able to list the credit transaction in one operation.  With this innovation owners could keep track of all merchandise or gallons sold for the day whether credit or cash, could keep track of credit sales in their McCaskey Credit Register and the cash sales would be recorded as usual in the cash register receipts.

In the above pictures you will see the designs for the patent submitted by Fletcher L. West.  This patent was for a Register Control Lock.  This invention related to a control lock for cash registers and similar machines. It was for preventing the operation of the machines except when the proper key was inserted to render the locking mechanism inoperative.  It was designed to work with the main shaft of the machine and to prevent movement of this main shaft.  It required the use of a slotted or split key in order to prevent the lock from being picked by a single tool. With this invention the cash register was able to operated as long as the key was in position, and would lock upon removal of the key. Quite innovative for its time.

I would like to thank some friends of mine Rich Cincotta and Chuck Dilts for providing me with this information so that I may share it with you.

Back to index page

To McCaskey Dedication