The cash register was patented in 1879 by saloon owner James Ritty to stop staff theft, and early mechanical models rang a bell with each sale to alert managers. That bell and spring-loaded drawer became the universal audio shorthand for a transaction, later sampled in cartoons, adverts and games. Online, the cha-ching survives as a meme for making money or spending big, similar to a ding sound effect used to mark a completed action, and it remains instantly understood across languages, including Spanish searches for sonido caja registradora.