Baldwin’s printing mechanism
The printing device consists of a hand-manipulated frame pivoted to the main frame of the machine by the shaft t. The paper is supplied from a roll about the shaft t, and an ink-ribbon is fed back and forth from the rolls u and u¹ over bars of the printing-frame which protrude through slots in the casing and act as platens for the impression of the paper and ink-ribbon against the type.
It is presumed that the paper was torn off after a record was printed in the same manner as in the more modern machines.
The Pottin Machine
Eight years after the Baldwin patent was issued, a Frenchman named Henry Pottin, residing in Paris, France, invented a machine for recording cash transactions, which he patented in England in 1883 and in the United States in 1885 ([see illustration on opposite page]).
The form and design of the machine, as will be noted, correspond quite favorably with the scheme of the present-day cash register, although it lacks the later refinement that has made the cash register acceptable from a visible point of view.
First key-set crank-operated machine and first attempt to record the items in addition
The Pottin invention is named here as the first in which two of the prime principles of the recording-adders of today are disclosed; one is the depressable key-set feature and the other is the recording of the numerical items. The Pottin machine was the first known depressable key-set crank-operated machine made to add columns of figures and the first machine in which an attempt was made to print the numerical items as they were added.
Turning to the [illustration of the U. S. patent drawings] of the Pottin machine, the reader will note that there are four large wheels shown, marked B. These wheels are what may be called the type-wheels, although they also serve as indicator wheels for registering cash sales. The type figures are formed by a series of needles fixed in the face of the wheels.
The means employed for presenting the proper type figure for printing and likewise the indicator figures to indicate the amount set up in each denominational order was as follows: