The mint finally stopped making pennies but didn’t remove pennies from legal tender. It makes sense to stop making cents. Inflation gradually wears down the smaller divisions.
It’s safe to assume that stores will make all prices end in 0 or 5 to avoid rounding.
Or maybe not?
I looked up the previous ‘weardown’ when half-cents were dropped. I thought it was around 1910. In fact the last half-cent was minted in 1857. Prices in half cents were still commonly advertised in the 1940s, so stores must have been rounding up the total instead of simplifying each price.
The British Addiator made in the 30s had both a hapenny and a farthing:
So I assumed the earliest cash registers, starting with Ritty’s patent 221360 in 1879, would have a hapenny category.
No hapennies, no pennies! The first cash register started at nickels. A 2025 keyboard could reproduce the 1879 keyboard. Of course we don’t use keyboards now, so the echo is irrelevant.
Polistra's Mill 