National Class 3000 Bookkeeping Machine on Stand

By the late 1920s, the National Cash Register Company of Dayton, Ohio, was convinced that its customers wanted an accounting machine that could print not only a few symbols but a full range of text. To satisfy this demand, it purchased the Ellis Adding-Typewriter Company of Newark, New Jersey, maker of a combination adding machine and typewriter (see MA.323497). Using Ellis patents, NCR developed its first “hybrid” product that relied on an entire machine developed by another company. The result was the NCR Class 3000 bookkeeping machine. Two examples were installed in Dayton banks in early 1929. This later example is from 1939.

The machine has a metal case painted black and green. It has a QWERTY typewriter keyboard at the front, with four rows of keys and a space bar. Only uppercase letters and numbers are shown. Behind this is a 9x9 full-keyboard adding machine, with nine columns of color-coded plastic keys. Several function keys are on the left, and operating bars are on the right.

Behind the typewriter is the two-colored ribbon and the printing mechanism for both the typewriter and the adding machine, with a wide rubber carriage behind this. Across the machine - above the keyboard and in front of the typewriter ribbon - is a serrated metal rod with seven metal pieces that slide along it. The entire machine sits on a metal frame with a wooden drop leaf. The motor is under the machine on the stand. The dimensions include the stand but not the drop leaf.

References:

American Office Machines Research Service, 1937, Section 3.21.

Stanley C. Allyn, My Half Century with NCR, p. 60.

P. A. Kidwell, “The Adding Machine Fraternity at St. Louis: Creating a Center of Invention, 1880-1920,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 22, 2 (April-June 2000), pp. 4-21.

“Local Banks Install Class 3000 Accounting Machines (Ellis Model,” NCR News, April, 1929, pp. 20, 21, 26.

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