Automatic Age

66
T h e A u t o m a t ic A ge
Here’s An Essay On Vending
Machines—Writer Admits His “Survey” ,,
Covered One Whole City Bl°c
The following article was tak­
en from a Fond du Lac, Wis.,
newspaper, and its contents are
very amusing:
American ingenuity has made
it possible to sell most anything
via the coin machine, but auto­
matic venders are little more
than “ penny catchers” set to
get the extra coins of change
that every person has in purse
or pocket at one time or another.
“ Push button for taxi,” the
sign displayed for years at a
doorway on Main street at Osh­
kosh, did not mean that the
Sawdust city was miles ahead
with vending machines and that
a flivver would come trundling
down the stairway when the
proper levers were worked. It
merely meant that the taxi of­
fice was on the second floor but
that it was not necessary to
climb the stairs to order ser­
vice.
And the fact that almost any­
thing could be vended from a
machine
and
that countless
things have been so marketed
does not mean that the practice
is general or likely to be. The
novelty wears off what is essen­
tially a novelty, and more vend­
ing machines go into the scrap
heap.
© International Arcade Museum
Last fo?' a While
Among the things that have
been vended from machine8' ^
most cases successfully f°r ^
time, are paper combs and W
extensive toilet kits, soap, P
fume in a bottle or a “ squirt ^
the kerchief, cigars, shoe
collar buttons, peanuts,
kerchiefs, assorted candies*
sorted nuts and prize cap® j
newspapers, name plates
pocket pieces with any na^ L fe
sired stamped on them. *
were also the shoe shining *
chines and the hand dryers
operated in hotel and rail
tion rest rooms.
But today the vending ^
chine is pretty well st ,-nes,
ized in a few principal
and the principal articles ^
posed of in this mannei
ball chewing gum, and
matches in boxes or papei ^
ers, with the postage s .
vending machine, by no mea J
new development, being P1 ^ $
hard by its backers to Pu^ ] y
the front rank as a &0
maker.
A
The vending machine
^
sold 5 cent packages of 2 ^ ^ $
been displaced by the
{
.
so
which holds a score oi
^
brands, far more than the
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