Cash carriers were used in shops and department stores to carry customers' payments from the sales assistant to the cashier

Cashier

Cashier is an occupation focused on the handling of cash money.- Retail :In a shop, a cashier is a person who scans the goods through a machine called a cash register that the consumer wishes to purchase at the retail store. After all of the goods have been scanned, the cashier then collects...

 and to carry the change and receipt back again.

Cash balls

The earliest type was a wooden ball which ran along sloping rails. One set of rails sloped down from sales desk to cash office and another set sloped in the opposite direction. This was known as a cash railway. William Stickney Lamson of Lowell, Massachusetts

Lowell, Massachusetts

Lowell is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA. According to the 2010 census, the city's population was 106,519. It is the fourth largest city in the state. Lowell and Cambridge are the county seats of Middlesex County...

 patented this system in 1881. His invention soon attracted the interest of other shopkeepers and in 1882 the Lamson Cash Carrier Company was incorporated in Boston. A working example can be seen in the Co-operative store at Beamish Museum

Beamish Museum

Beamish, The North of England Open Air Museum is an open-air museum located at Beamish, near the town of Stanley, County Durham, England. The museum's guiding principle is to preserve an example of everyday life in urban and rural North East England at the climax of industrialisation in the early...

 in North East England

North East England

North East England is one of the nine official regions of England. It covers Northumberland, County Durham, Tyne and Wear, and Teesside . The only cities in the region are Durham, Newcastle upon Tyne and Sunderland...

 and one is still its original location at Coolamon, New South Wales

Coolamon, New South Wales

Coolamon is a town in the Riverina region of south-west New South Wales, Australia. Coolamon is north-west of Wagga Wagga and south-west of Sydney via the Hume and Sturt Highways. The town is situated on the railway line between Junee and Narrandera. Coolamon had a population of 1,339 at the 2006...

.

Wire carriers

The next type was a carriage suspended on pulleys from a wire between sales desk, launched from a catapult. The best-known types were "Rapid Wire" and "Air-Line."

Air-Line

The Air-Line Company was based in the United States. It manufactured a Gipe designed system. A cord passed over multiple pulleys to propel the car. Lamsons took over Air-Line and cars usually have "Air-Line" on one side and "Lamson" on the other.

Dart Cash

Dart Cash was a British company established by a grocer from Stoke on Trent, William Alfred Edwards. It was a simple gravity carrier patented in 1918. Later enhancements included a spring for propulsion.

Gipe

Gipe were an American company founded by Emanuel Clarence Gipe of Freeport, Illinois

Freeport, Illinois

Freeport is a city in and the county seat of Stephenson County, Illinois, United States. The population was 26,443 at the 2000 census. The mayor of Freeport is George W...

. Gipe installations were popular in England.

Lamson Rapid Wire

Lamsons purchased the Rapid Service Store Railway Company of Detroit which licenced an invention by Robert McCarty of Detroit, Michigan.

Pneumatic tubes

A later type was the pneumatic tube

Pneumatic tube

Pneumatic tubes are systems in which cylindrical containers are propelled through a network of tubes by compressed air or by partial vacuum...

 system, still installed in a few shops. Pneumatic tube systems are also now used in supermarkets for moving cash in bulk from tills to the central cash office.

Lamson

The company of Lamson

Lamson Engineering Company Ltd

The Lamson Engineering Company Ltd was the best known British manufacturer of Cash Ball, Rapid Wire and Pneumatic tube delivery systems from 1937 to 1976.-History:...

 dominated the market - see Lamson tube.

Sturtevants

Sturtevants of Boston, Massachusetts was an offshoot of an American company. They purchased part of Reid Brothers around the early 1920s and the pneumatic tube business of Cooke, Troughton and Simms. In 1949 they sold up to Lamson.