The NCR Corporation and Dayton History joined in an innovative partnership committed to preserving the NCR Archive. The NCR Archive is located at 224 North St. Clair Street. For over three months in 1999, trucks traveled between NCR's Building 28 and the Archive Center, bringing the three million pieces of this extraordinary collection to its new home.

As we explore, we become more and more aware that it is indeed a national treasure. We knew when we assumed management that it was one of the finest corporate collections in the nation, but even we, who have a love of the stuff of history, continue to be amazed at the breadth and depth of the Archive.

Perhaps first and foremost in everyone’s minds are the beautiful wood and brass cash registers (over 350 of them) which represent turn of the century precision technology at its finest. There are also artifacts such as machinery from the first factory; founder John H. Patterson’s desk and chair; financial transaction machines; hundreds of thousands of engineering, invention and production drawings, including early drawings of Charles F. Kettering and Edward Deeds; Joe Desch’s “Lost Lab” which helped break the German Enigma code during World War II; computers which document much of the history of computer technology; ATM’s; scanning devices; the list goes on and on.


John H. Patterson Changes the World

However much the story of the Company is a part of our local story, its contribution to the nation and the world reached far beyond the bounds of the Miami Valley. For one thing, “The Cash” revolutionized the world’s way of doing business. Before John Patterson sold the world on his business system, most merchants had no idea how much profit they should have made at the end of a year or even how much was missing from their cash box at the end of the day. The cash register gave them, for the first time, the means of running their businesses professionally and systematically.

John H. Patterson also led the world in the development of selling techniques. The concept of a school for employees began at NCR when the Company began their School of Instruction for salesmen in 1893. He also developed educational advertising, where a manufacturer educated the public on their need for a particular product and created the desire for that product. His health and education programs for workers introduced the world to the concept that a good work environment, health care, neighborhood improvement programs, recreational opportunities, and continuing education for workers raised productivity, and gave workers the incentive and vision to reach for more in their lives.


The Image Collection

One of Patterson’s most deeply held beliefs was in the value of “teaching through the eye.” He and his photographers took and collected pictures not only of life around the factory, but around the world. The Company presented lectures on an endless number of subjects, from travel, health, landscaping, and urban reform to factory life and worker welfare programs. Images such as the 1912 Stockholm Olympics; turn of the century Alaska; construction of the Panama Canal; life in such faraway places as India, China, Japan, Ireland and Sweden; the 1906 San Francisco earthquake; the 1912 Indianapolis 500; worker welfare programs of other companies such as U.S. Steel and the Heinz Company; the Wright brothers and early flight, are only a few of the hundreds of topics that held his interest. He also documented cash register installations, so the Archive contains thousands of images of communities and businesses across the nation and the world. Patterson and his successors left behind over 1.5 million images, which include 100,000 glass plate negatives and 68,000 magic lantern slides. They reflect the life of this man whose boundless energy and unlimited range of interests reached out to bring about widespread reform in business, government and the lives of workers. John Patterson died in 1922, but his successors continued and expanded on many of his beliefs and ideals, and carefully photographed and saved in the tradition of their predecessor. What they left behind was a rich legacy, which documents not only Miami Valley history, but contributes heavily to the story of a nation.

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