SIC 3578 Calculating and Accounting Machines, Except Electronic Computers

SIC 3578

This industry covers establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing point-of-sale devices, fund transfer devices, and other calculating and accounting machines, except electronic computers. Included are electronic calculating and accounting machines that must be paced by operator intervention, even when augmented by attachments. These machines may include program control or have input/output capabilities.

NAICS CODE(S)

334119

Other Computer Peripheral Equipment Manufacturing

333313

Office Machinery Manufacturing

Charles Xavier Thomas, of France, is credited with starting the calculating and accounting machines industry when he introduced the arithmometer in the 1870s. Frank Baldwin and William S. Burroughs also were major innovators in early calculating machine technology. During the industrial revolution and until the mid-1900s, mechanical and electrical adding machines dominated industry offerings. The invention of the hand-held calculator in 1948 and the integrated circuit in the late 1960s, however, initiated the demise of traditional adding machines.

Producers of desk-top and hand-held calculators shipped goods worth a total of $1.4 billion in the late 1990s. Both products had essentially become commodity items by that time. Electronic cash registers, an offshoot of calculating machines, offered higher profit margins for manufacturers. Scanning technology and the demand for related inventory tracking systems in the 1980s and early 1990s spurred the development of new "high-tech" cash registers that buoyed profits for some prior producers of traditional calculating machines. Other competitors exited the market or shifted to production of other equipment.

Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) and Point of Service (POS) devices, which were added to industry offerings in the 1980s, quickly escalated sales of cash registers and adding machines. Sales of ATMs, which store cash and are used primarily by bank customers to conduct account transactions, skyrocketed past a total of 90,000 units by 1993. Less expensive POS devices, which allow consumers to conduct electronic account transactions from a purchase point such as a gas station or supermarket, numbered about 300,000 in 1993.

By the early 1990s, the market for ATMs was becoming saturated in comparison to the 1980s. Manufacturers' earnings were expected to rise as industry analysts projected a growing demand for replacement machines and a...