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NCR Corporation () is a technology company specializing in solutions for the retail and financial industries. Its main products are point-of-sale terminals, automatic teller machines, check processing systems, barcode scanners, business consumables and high-powered data warehousing systems.

The company was founded in 1884 and acquired by AT&T in 1991. A restructuring of AT&T in 1996, led to its re-establishment on January 1, 1997, as a separate company; that restructuring also led to the spin-off of Lucent Technologies.

In January 26, 2006, the company reported revenue of $6.028 billion for the twelve months ending December 31, 2005.NCR Reports 2005 Fourth-Quarter Results, a January 2006 press release from the company's website

History

Early years

The company began as the National Manufacturing Company of Dayton, Ohio, which was established to manufacture and sell the first mechanical cash register, invented in 1879 by James Ritty. In 1884 the company and patents were bought by John Henry Patterson and his brother Frank Jefferson Patterson and the firm was renamed the National Cash Register Company. Patterson formed NCR into one of the first modern American companies, introducing new, aggressive sales methods and business techniques. He established the first sales training school in 1893, and introduced a comprehensive social welfare program for his factory workers.

Other significant figures in the early history of the company were Charles F. Kettering, Thomas J. Watson, Sr. and Edward A. Deeds. Watson, the founder of IBM, eventually worked his way up to general sales manager. Bent on inspiring the dispirited NCR sales force, Watson introduced the motto "THINK!" Signs with this motto were erected in factory buildings, sales offices, and club rooms during the mid-1890s. "THINK" later became a widely-known symbol of IBM. Kettering designed the first cash register powered by an electric motor in 1906. Within a few years he developed the Class 1000 register which was in production for 40 years, and the O.K. Telephone Credit Authorization system for verifying credit in department stores.

Expansion

NCR expanded quickly and became multi-national in 1888. By 1911 it had sold one million machines and grown to almost 6,000 employees. Combined with rigorous legal attacks, Patterson's methods enabled the company to fight off, bankrupt or buy-out over 80 of its early competitors and achieve control of 95% of the U.S. market.

In 1912, the company was found guilty of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. Patterson and Watson were convicted for illegal anti-competitive sales practices and were sentenced to one year of imprisonment. Their convictions were unpopular with the public due to the efforts of Patterson and Watson to help those affected by the Dayton, Ohio floods of 1913, but efforts to have them pardoned by President Woodrow Wilson were unsuccessful. However, their convictions were overturned on appeal in 1915 on the grounds that important defense evidence should have been admitted.

Two million units were sold by 1922, the year John Patterson died. In 1925 the company went public with an issue of $55 million in stock, at that time the largest public offering in United States history. During World War I the company manufactured shell fuzes and aircraft instrumentation, and during World War II built aero-engines, bomb sights and code-breaking machines, including the American bombe designed by Joseph Desch.

Post-war

Building on their wartime experience, NCR became a major post-war force in developing new technology. In 1953, following their acquisition of Computer Research Corporation the previous year, the company created a specialised electronics division. In 1956, NCR introduced its first electronic device, the Class 29 Post-Tronic, a bank machine using magnetic stripe technology. With GE the company manufactured its first transistor-based computer in 1957, the NCR 304. Also in the 1950s NCR introduced MICR (Magnetic Ink Character Recognition). In 1962, NCR introduced the CRAM storage device, the first mass storage alternative to magnetic tape. The company's first all-integrated circuit computer was the Century 100 of 1968. The company adopted the name NCR Corporation in 1974.

Computers

In 1982, NCR became involved in open systems architecture. Its first such system was the UNIX-powered TOWER 16/32, the success of which (approximately 100,000 were sold) established NCR as a pioneer in bringing industry standards and open systems architecture to the computer market. These 5000-series systems were based on Motorola 680xx CPUs and supported NCR's proprietary transaction processing system TMX, which was mainly used by financial institutions.

In the 1980s, NCR sold various PC compatible AT-class computers, like the small form factor NCR-3390 (called an "intelligent terminal"). They proposed a customized version of MS-DOS, NCR-DOS, which for example offered support for switching the CPU between 6, 8 or 10 MHz speeds. The computers featured an improved CGA adapter, the NGA, which had a 640x400 text mode more suitable for business uses than the original 640x200 mode, with characters drawn using single-pixel-wide lines, giving an appearance similar to that of classic IBM 3270 terminals. The additional four-color 640x400 graphical mode was identical to CGA's 320x200 mode from a programming point of view.

In 1990, NCR introduced the System 3000, a seven-level family of computers based on Intel's 386 and 486 CPUs. The majority of the System 3000 range utilised IBM's Micro Channel architecture rather than the more prevalent ISA architecture, and utilised SCSI peripherals as well as the more popular parallel and serial port interfaces, resulting in a premium product with premium pricing.

AT&T

NCR was acquired September 19, 1991 by AT&T for $7.4 billion and was joined with Teradata Corporation on February 28, 1992. As an AT&T subsidiary, its 1992 year-end headcount was 53,800 employees and contractors.Information Statement dated November 25, 1996, furnished to AT&T shareholders of record By 1993, the subsidiary produced a year-end $1.287 billion net loss on $7.265 billion in revenue. The net losses continued in 1994 and 1995, losses that required repeated subsidies from the parent company and resulted in a 1995 year-end headcount of 41,100. During these three years, AT&T was the former NCR's largest customer, accounting for over $1.5 billion in revenue.

For a while, starting in 1994 the subsidiary was renamed AT&T Global Information Solutions, but in 1995, AT&T decided to spin-off the company, and in 1996, changed its name back to NCR in prepartion for a spin-off. The company outlined its reasons for the spin-off in an Information Statement sent to its stockholders, which cited, in addition to "changes in customer needs" and "need for focused management time and attention", the following:

...of vertical integration *o varying degrees, many of the actual and potential customers of Lucent and NCR are or will be competitors of AT&T's communications services businesses. NCR believes that its efforts to target the communications industry have been hindered by the reluctance of AT&T's communications services competitors to make purchases from an AT&T subsidiary.

NCR re-emerged as a stand-alone company on January 1, 1997.

Recent years

In July of 1997, NCR purchased Compris Technologies, a privately-held company in Kennesaw, Georgia producing software for restaurant chains.NCR Corp. to buy Compris Technologies, a July 1997 article from the Atlanta Business Chronicle

In November of 1997, NCR purchased Dataworks Inc., a 60-person privately-held company in San Antonio, Texas.NCR Corp. buys Dataworks software firm, a November 1997 article from the Dayton Business Journal

The Montgomery County Historical Society and NCR Corporation joined in 1998 into an innovative partnership committed to preserving the voluminous NCR Archive. For more than three months in late 1999, trucks traveled between NCR's Building 28 and the Historical Society's Research Center, bringing the three million pieces of this extraordinary collection to its new home.

In 1998, NCR sold its computer hardware manufacturing assets to Solectron and ceased to produce general-purpose computer systems, focusing instead on the retail and financial industries. In 2000, NCR acquired CRM provider Ceres Integrated Solutions and services company 4Front Technologies. Recent acquisitions include self-service companies Kinetics, InfoAmerica and Galvanon, and software company DecisionPoint. In 2006, NCR acquired software company IDVelocity.

Management

  • Interim CEO: Jim Ringler (2005)
  • Interim CEO: SVP (1995)
  • Interim CEO: Gil Williamson (1993)

Products

Hardware

Software

Services

Obsolete

  • Class 1000 register
  • Class 2000 bank posting machine (c. 1922-1973)
  • NCR Voyager, an i386 SMP computer platform that preceded Intel's SMP specification.

References

External links

Electronics companies of the United States | Computer companies of the United States | Companies based in Ohio | Fortune 1000 | 1884 establishments

NCR Corporation | NCR Corporation | National Cash Register | NCR | NCR

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "NCR Corporation".

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