AUTOMATIC SELLING MACHINE

Hokitika Guardian, 23 October 1929, Page 5

AUTOMATIC SELLING MACHINE

ENORMOUS EXPANSION IN AMERICA. i ■ • ■; “ The spread of the automatic vend/ ing idea is -astonishing.•• Those' in the business prophesy huge arcades where customers are waited on exclusively by vending and change-making automatons. Already there are stores of this sort. One at J ari" amusement' beaoh near New York sells 50 different commodities. Broadway lias a “Soclamat” in which eleven machines sell loganberry jui.e,' root beer, orangeade ana the like.

One inventor, says the “Literary Digest,” lias P r °duced a machine that rivals the blonde lady who stands in the restaurant window and deftly flips hot cakes. The automatic wheat cake vendor, electri.ally operated, has a magazine which will • accept enough dough for a hundred servings. A quarter dropped into the slot, entitles you to four wheat calces, and starts a fascinating series of operations, One ,v one the portions of batter drop on the hot plate. When one side if Drown, an automatic flipper turns the cake. The machine supplies, syrup. Butter has to be served by hand. Even gasolene now is sold by machine. The slot takes 50 cents. An adjustment allows the owner to set the amount according to the day's price. The owner of a washing-machine business rec-enly was struck with a tnousand old-fashioned units. Application of the eoin-and-slot idea not only saved his financial hide, but is making his fortune. He put a time attachment on each machine, and installed them in the basement of apartment houses. For twenty-five cents the housewife could use the washer for thirty-five minutes. The success of this venture was immediate, and the business is being greatly expanded. The sale of music and entertainment via the coin slot is as old as tne penny arcade. From this humble beginning the automatic, idea' has spread into many and higher branches. There is, a machine which plavs twelve phonograph records for a nickel. Another gives you a selection from an automatic orchestra. Pianos with coin attachments have been greatly ' improved. The autoradio how is .being installed in hotel rooms.