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The Development of the First POS Software
We are going to travel back in time to when the massive mainframe
dinosaurs took up entire temperature controlled rooms and when the first
ERC or electronic cash registers had limited functions and communication
capability. Technology was catching on, and in August of 1973 IBM
announced in the IBM 3650 and 3660 Store Systems, which were to
revolutionize the commerce. These state of the art systems were in
fact, mainframe computers that would control the 128 IBM 3653/3663
Point-of-sale Registers. This system was the first commercial use of
Client/ Server technology as well as peer-to-peer communications, and
Local Area Network (LAN). Pathmark Stores in New Jersey and Dillard's
Department Stores installed these systems in mid 1974.
We inch forward in time to 1979, when Gene Mosher's Old Canal Cafe in
Syracuse, New York took customer orders at the restaurant's entrance,
using POS software on an Apple. The orders were print in the
restaurant's kitchen, by the time the customers would arrive at their
tables most of the time their food was waiting for them, or arrived
quickly there after.
A few more steps and we're in 1985; Mosher introduces the very first
color graphic, touchscreen-driven, Point-of-sale interface. Mosher ran
his software on an Atari ST, which had 512 KB of RAM. By the end of the
20th century, cash register manufacturers and other POS software
developers worldwide adopting Mosher's un-patented software as the
actual standard for point-of-sale systems.
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