Vendor lineage
Elgin - the point of sale, and everything attached to it
Brazilian manufacturer of commercial-automation equipment; recorded as the owner of Bematech.
Elgin manufactures the equipment a Brazilian shop counter is made of - thermal printers, barcode readers, point-of-sale computers, self-service terminals and cash drawers - across a range that runs from a single till to a retail chain.
It is on this timeline because of what it owns rather than only what it makes: the Portuguese encyclopaedia records Elgin as Bematech’s owner, which puts two of Brazil’s commercial-automation names in one place. The Bematech entry here notes that TOTVS also lists Bematech among its subsidiaries, and neither statement is resolved on this site.
The category itself is worth understanding because it is invisible until it fails. Point-of-sale hardware is bought once, installed by somebody who will not return, expected to run for a decade, and connected to a fiscal regime that changes by legislation rather than by release cycle. Very little enterprise equipment has that combination of constraints.
- Elgin - company site: commercial automation including thermal printers, barcode readers, computers, self-service terminals and cash drawers, for small retailers through to retail chains and restaurants
- Bematech (Wikipedia, pt) - records Elgin as Bematech’s owner
- Wikipedia (Portuguese) - Elgin, a Brazilian manufacturer of appliances and electronics within Grupo Elgin, founded 1952 in Mogi das Cruzes, Sao Paulo; it acquired Bematech Hardware in 2019 for R$25 million
- Museu Angelo Spricigo, sewing machine archive - the company began operations in 1952 in Mogi das Cruzes and produced its first sewing machine a year later. Its founders had visited the British Museum in the late 1940s and been struck by the Elgin Marbles; deciding the company should work to a similar standard, they took the name Elgin. Building the cast-iron machine body required its own foundry, which became a division of the company in its own right