NCR Voyix
NCR Corporation is a technology company, specialising in solutions for the retail, and financial industries, as well as decision support systems. Its products include point-of-sale, automatic teller machines, check processing systems, business consumables, and high powered database and transaction processing systems. In 2001 the company made a profit of $142 million on revenues of $5,917 million.
History
The company origins are as the National Manufacturing Company of Dayton, Ohio which was established to manufacture and sell the 1879 invention of James Ritty – the first mechanical cash register. In 1884 the company and the patents were bought by John Henry Patterson and the firm was renamed the National Cash Register Company. He formed it into one of the first modern American companies, introducing new aggressive sales methods and business techniques. His methods combined with legal attacks to fight off, bankrupt, or buy-out the eighty plus competitors of the early years. In 1912 the company was found guilty of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act, having control of 95% of the U.S. market. Patterson established the first sales training school in 1893. He also 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 and Edward A. Deeds. Thomas J. Watson, Sr., 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," and "THINK!" signs were erected in factory buildings, sales offices, and club rooms during the mid 1890s. "THINK" later became a widely known symbol of IBM. Watson was sentenced, along with John H. Patterson (the owner of NCR), to one year of imprisonment. Their conviction was unpopular with the public, due to the efforts of Patterson and Watson to help those affected by the 1913 Dayton, Ohio floods, but efforts to have them pardoned by President Woodrow Wilson were unsuccessful. However, the Court of Appeals overturned the conviction on appeal in 1915, on the grounds that important defense evidence should have been admitted.
Charles F. 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.
The company soon expanded and became multi-national in 1888. It had sold 1 million machines by 1911 and had almost 6,000 employees. Two million units were sold by 1922. Indicative of a certain conservatism, the Class 2000 bank posting machine, introduced in 1922 remained in production until 1973.
The company manufactured shell fuzes and aircraft instrumentation during World War I, and aero-engines, bomb sights and code-breaking machines during World War II.
Building on the wartime experience the company became a major force in new technology post-war. Following the acquisition of Computer Research Corporation in 1952 the company created a specialised electronics division in 1953. The company introduced its first electronic machine, the Class 29 Post-Tronic, a bank machine utilising magnetic-strip technology in 1956. 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 changed its name to NCR Corporation in 1974. However the company was in poor financial shape.
In 1982 NCR became involved in open systems architecture, producing its first such system, the UNIX-powered TOWER 16/32, The NCR TOWER supermicrocomputer system was launched, establishing NCR as a pioneer in bringing industry standards and open systems architecture to the computer market. 100,000 Tower systems were sold.
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 and 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 somewhat similar to classic IBM 3270 terminals. The additional 640x400 graphical mode with 4 colors was identical to CGA's 320x200 mode from the programming point of view.
In 1990, NCR introduced the System 3000, a 7 level family of computers based on Intel 386 and 486 CPUs, and going from laptops to massively parallel systems.
In 1991 the company was bought by AT&T for $7.4 billion. It was joined with Teradata Corporation in the same year. In 1994 it was renamed AT&T Global Information Solutions, but in 1995 AT&T decided to spin-off the company and in 1996 its name was changed back to NCR prior to its emergence as an independent company on January 1, 1997.
Later in 1999 the company ceased manufacturing of general purpose computer systems, and serving general markets, and focused on the retail and financial industries.
Management
- CEO: Bill Nuti (08-08-2005-Present Date)
- Interim CEO: James (Jim) M. Ringler (2005)
- CEO: Mark Hurd (2003-2005) left NCR to head Hewlett Packard.
- CEO: Lars Nyberg (1995-2003)
Products
- Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs)
- Teradata, a high-performance Database management system
- Exabyte tape backup systems
- Printers
- NCR UNIX SVR4 MP-RAS a UNIX variant based on System V
- NCR Voyager, an i386 SMP computer platform that preceded Intel's SMP specification.
Diversity
NCR received a 100% rating on the first Corporate Equality Index released by the Human Rights Campaign in 2002. They have maintained this rating in 2003 and 2004.