Summary of the Invention The present application is an improvement on the referenced patents and all other known prior art including United States Patents 4,251,867 and 3,222,057. The present invention is an improvement because it both recycles money and maintains a record or records of every transaction which takes place at a point of sale terminal or a cash handling machine. The record or records maintained are free from non-destructive interference in all embodiments of the present invention and free from some versions of destructive interference. In other words, if an operator or other person is not willing to destroy the record thus maintained it will show without doubt the exact course of a transaction. Further the present invention is operative to prevent many forms of destructive interference by the maintenance of a dual record. Still further, even a destructive interference will have to be quite clever to rebut the inference that the operator should not be held responsible for the failure to see that a proper record is not maintained.

The prior art has many examples of cash handling machines

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which divide primarily into two categories: the first is those machines intended to reduce or eliminate cash handling by employees in retail establishments. The second is the automatic teller machines which have become so prominent recently in the banking world.

The cash handling machines universally fail to have a sufficiently complete transaction record. The automatic teller machines neither recycle cash nor carry a transaction record adaptable to the retail sales transaction. In the automatic teller machines all records are related to an account number. The automatic teller machines all retain cash received in a way which either requires later employee verification or makes such verification impossible.

In its most elemental form the present invention employs a cash handling device which can receive or dispense cash only through the actuation of a control element. The cash received is intended to be recyclable. Cash means money or- money's worth in any form such as credit slips, stamps, coupons and the like. The cash handling device must be one in which money is sealed in a secure container which is accessible only through the actuation of a control element. The cash handling machine must store the money received in an ordered manner so that cash received and dispensed can be related to a particular transaction from its position either in the device or when removed from the device.

The control elements which are actuated must cause a record of their actuation to be made and the actuation record thus made must be sufficiently precise to identify every transaction fully as to time, type and content including the number and

denomination of every bill and coin received or dispensed. With these elements no operator can remove or add cash to the# automatic money handler which can not be discovered by a later investigation.

Another embodiment of the present invention employs an operator identification system in which the operator wears a transponder which interacts with a device radiating energy resulting in an automatic operator identification.

Without the transponder system, operator identification can ^' be achieved by using any kind of operator "key". A "key" can be mechanical, electrical, electro-mechanical, keyboard entered code magnetic or any combination of them.

When an operator identification system is used the recording device records the operator identification entered for each transaction. As a practical matter, many retail operations only have one operator for either each shift or for each terminal.

The devices can be made in two basic embodiments: one in which the operator enters cashed received from the customer and one in which the customer directly enters the cash. For United States currency, the experts believe that a normally skilled person is the best counterfeit detector available. Therefore when the operator handles cash there should be no practical need to have a device to detect invalid currency. When the operator does not handle cash and when the customer may have reason to be suspicious of either the machine or the operator, it is desirable to have a viewing window to exhibit to the customer the cash entered into the device by the operator. In is useful to have a

viewing window for the purpose of showing a customer that the bill received can be directly viewed. For example, the viewing window enables an operator to have a complete and accurate answer to the customer who claims that a ten dollar bill was given to the operator who only gave credit for a five dollar bill. The operator to complete the proof may have to actuate the "Cancel • Current Sale" key which causes the device to return to its state before the commencement of its sale, thereby dispensing the bill paid in so far.

One embodiment of the present invention uses a computer, normally a micro-computer, to control the actuation of the various elements of the machine and to perform all accounting and audit functions which are desired or necessary. The programming of a micro-computer to properly direct and control the automatic money handler is a task within the present skill of those skilled in the art and therefore details of the programs controlling the device are not discussed in this application.

It is very important that the audit trail recorded is not available to the operator for either destruction or alteration. One solution to this problem is the generation of a second audit trail not accessible* by the operator such as the creation of a magnetic recording of the audit trail which can be converted to a humanly readable form if necessary.

Description of the Drawings Figure 1 shows a perspective view of one embodiment of a cash handling machine.

Figure 2 is a block diagram showing the operator's actions

in receiving and dispensing cash from the machine in Figure 1.

Figure 3 is a perspective view of a second embodiment of the present invention showing an automatic money handling machine for cash insertion by a customer.

Figure 4 shows a block diagram showing the operator's actions in accepting or rejecting money in actuating the embodiment shown in Figure 3.

Figure 5 shows a portion of an audit tape generated by the device shown in Figures 1 and 3 which forms a part of the present invention. ^•

Figure 6 is a block diagram showing the interconnection of the various functional elements which form a part of the device shown in figures 1 and 3.

Figures 7 and 8 show embodiments of keyboards which are used with the embodiments of the invention shown in Figures 1 and 3. Figure 9 shows a side view of a coupon storage web. Figure 10 shows a side view of bill cache dump receiving box.

Description of the Invention Figure 1 shows a perspective view of one embodiment of the present invention having a steel cabinet 16 which can be actually formed as a vault to have either or both burglary and fire protection capability. The cabinet 16 has a door 12 which can be locked either by a combination or a key. A shown in Application Serial Number 522,724, the entire assembly can be able to be locked within the vault into which it descends.

The cover 34 has a keyboard section 28, a bill receiving

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section 30 with bill input guides 40 and a bill viewing section 32 with windows 44. The cover 34 has mated with it a coin receiving bucket 46 which fits into cover well 36 and a coin delivery bucket 42. A coupon receiving slots 48 is shown adjacent the keypad portion of the keyboard.

The embodiment of the invention* shown in Figure 1 may be used in conjunction with a cash register or point-of-sale device or it may itself perform that function. This specification is written on the basis that the point of sale function is performed by a separate device.

Figure 2 shows the sequence of operation of the device shown in Figure 1. The figure 1 embodiment of the device is intended for use in an environment* in which the operator receives money in some form from the customer.

A sale sequence would be as follows: The customer orders and the* sale is "rung-up" on the cash register which electronically transfer the total of sale to the automatic money handler as shown in block 1. The operator receives payment in bills, coins, coupons or any combination of them. The operator's identification code is entered* into the machine by some means which will be described in more detail later. The operator then deposits coin ^' s into the coin receiving bucket as described in more detail in copending United States patent application Serial Number 522,575. As described in that application, the coins are processed automatically. Bills received by the operator are placed one-at-a-time into the proper bill slot 40 which -may be designated for $1's, $5's, $10's and $20's/others. _ϊn the case of $1's,$5's and $10's it is merely necessary for the operator to

actuate the accept key to feed each bill. In an alternative arrangement, the money handler can be directed to accept all $1's, $5's and $10's fed to the bill input slot. In such a case, the operator needs only to actuate the proper keys if bill a $20 or larger is inserted into the machine or if some other form of non-cash payment such as.check,credit card, stamp, coupon, etc is used. The keyboard shown in Figure 7 would have the appropriate key actuated to indicate the type of payment received and the the appropriate key or keys to indicate amount of such payment. This embodiment of the invention permits the rejection of any bill entered.

The automatic money handler calculates the total amount of money received and determines the amount of change due if any. If change is due, the money handler delivers the appropriate change to the operator who in turn delivers it to the customer as shown in block 7 of Figure 2.

A second embodiment of the invention is shown in perspective in Figure 3. This automatic money handler 10 is intended to receive money directly from the customer who places coins one-at- a-time in slot 26 and bill is bill receiving trays 16 to input slots 18. The bills thus inserted into the machine are viewed through windows 20. The operator side 14 of the device 10 has a keyboard as shown in Figure 8. The detailed operation of this device has been described in United States patents 4,310,885 and 4,249,552 which are incorporated by reference herein.

The keyboard shown in Figure 8 of.this application is a simplified version of that shown in the two referenced patents.

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In particular, the keyboard shown in this application has all of the keys in the referenced patents except those relating to the "Prompting Device". The operation of the device is similar to that previously described as shown in Figure 4 of the drawings. One important difference is that the device will not operate without the entry of an appropriate operator identification number. This Is shown by the arrow marked 3.1 in Figure 2.

Entry of the operator identification can be achieved by any number of ways well known in the art. These include mechanical key, electro-mechanical* key, magnetic key, entry of a proper code into the machine by magnetic stripe, keypad code entry or radio signal entry of code. In that connection, the patents listed below show such units which can be combined with the present invention: 4,047,156; 3,299,424; 3,752,960; 4,223,830; 4,236,068. It is well within the knowledge present in the art today to both require that an operator be identified and to record the identification thus required. What is considered inventive is to require such identification in combination with the maintenance of an accurate and thorough transaction record. The assignee of the present invention has begun to develop an inventive device to achieve the operator identification; that invention will be the ^• subject of a later filed application.

Figure 6 shows in block diagram form the various interconnections of the data processing elements which operate the electro-mechanical elements of the present invention. This basic operation has been thoroughly described in earlier United States patents and patent applications previously mentioned. The present configuration is different in several respects. The

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present device can accept various forms of non-cash payments as cash and these are stored in the coupon cache 902. Cache 902 is controlled by the data processor 350 through the multiplexer 368 in the same basic manner that the other bill receiving channels are controlled. In the embodiment of the present invention which has been shown the cache 902 is a serpentine webs which holds relatively few coupons. Coupons stored in greater number than the capacity of the serpentine web are permitted to drop in a removal storage container. A structure to achieve this simple function is shown in Figure 9. See United States patent

3,447,655 which shows one embodiment of a device of this general type which generally satisfy the function sought to be performed.

The device shown in this patent is not reversible but the depicted* structure in the present invention is reversible and is easily programmed to control the reverse motion of the drive.

An important aspect of the present invention is the ability of the money handler to quickly take bills from cache storage to storage in another container. Further in the transfer from one container to another the order of the bills is not changed.

Another difference is shown by the addition of block 910 which is labeled "cache dump". The structure which may be used for this function is shown in Figure 10. It is shown as a separate mechanical element on the block diagram, Figure 6. In some embodiments it could be as simple as a box to be filled requiring no control elements. The assignee of the present invention has under development a novel form of cache dump which it expects to be the subject of a latter patent application. The

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device shown in Figure 10 is sufficient to permit the bill stored in the webs to be dumped at high speed and maintained in the order in which they were originally inserted into the machine.

The audit tape 701 shown in detail in Figure 5. The tape shows the date, time. The tape further shows the amount due, the amount paid and the change. The column 714 marked "deposit" shows what bills are deposited by denomination. Column 716 shows what bills are withdrawn from the machine also by denomination. This requirement implies that no bill cache which Is able to receive more than one denomination of bill can dispense bills. Column 718 shows the designation "OID" which stands for "operator identification". The device will take the 14 to 16 bit binary operator code number typically used and convert it to a three digit number for printing on the tape.

Looking at tape 701 shows how the system works. The due, paid and change columns operation Is obvious. In the deposit column various entries are shown such as "I", "31" "X", "T" which stand respectively for: one dollar, three-one dollars, ten dollars and twenty dollars.

Column 716 shows the bills dispensed as change using a code based on position of the column multiplied by a numeral which numeral is printed in the proper column. For example: "x" means no bill of that denomination; 1 means one such bill and so on. the three digit column is read from left to right as ten dollar bills, five dollar bills and one dollar bills. Looking down column 716. transaction segment 754 means that one ten, one five and two ones were dispensed as change. Transaction segment* 756 showns that three ones were dispensed as change.

Because in most circumstances, coin change is relatively unimportant only the actual amount of change is indicated. However, the denomination of change dispensed can easily be shown since the information is available to the computer and can easily be printed out.

Paper tapes of the type shown can easily be destroyed or cut and pasted by dishonest employees. To . prevent some, such tampering, the tape will show the time for every transaction and will repeatedly show the day and date at a frequency of every ten transactions. A still further precaution is to create a second source of audit control. There are many ways to create such a trail. One such way is shown in Figure 6. the printer-recorder 375 shown in that drawing is a device which can keep a three day record on magnetic tape of all transactions. One such tape recorder available is manufactured by Exatron of Sunnyvale, California and is called a "Stringy Floppy".

The present invention has been described with respect to specific structures. Those skilled in the art readily appreciate that there are very many ways to implement the present invention. Those various implementations which are within the scope and spirit of the present specification are intended to be within the scope of the appended claims. For example, the device in its present embodiment as programmed has a structured routine for "Cancel Previous Sale" which requires the entry into the machine of all bills, coupons and coins which were given as change before the device will return the bills, coins and coupons originally received. This exact transaction is* of course recorded in detail on the audit tape.