Automatic Age

June , 1931
A u t o m a t ic A ge
15
in many apartment buildings profitable and
practical. But the coming of quick frozen
meats brings up new problems o f refrigera­
tion, which are proving hard enough to
solve in the well equipped retail store,
much less in vending machine units in
their present stage of development. If
quick frozen products attain a high degree
° f popularity, it may mean the narrowing
down of the possible field for refrigerated
automatic stores. It is always possible for
an older method of course to continue in
°Pen competition with the new and make
a success, for while quick frozen meats
aye being so seriously considered, merchan­
disers like the Bohack stores in Brooklyn
continue to sell fresh meats in packages
with such success as if the quick frozen
process had never been invented.
In addition to the problems of refrigera­
tion and possible changes in the food mar-
et, the refrigerated automatic stores are
also seriously handicapped by the lack of
change-making machines and perfect slug
devices. Automatic stores in the real sense
can never be adopted extensively until
change making machines that will reject
slugs are possible. Mechanisms for making
accurate change seem to be comparatively
easy to the problem of efficiently rejecting
the slugs.
Vending machines for dispensing drinks
and frozen goods are much smaller units
than those designed for handling food prod­
Ucts, and in general present less compli­
cated problems.
But even here the
problems have been serious enough to con-
ne the devices practically to experimental
and test projects until now. The mechanical
difficulties have been many. Maintaining
a Proper and even temperature has been
a serious problem; as the necessary open-
lng of the cabinet to emit the product pur­
chased results in a raising of the tempera­
ture. Coin mechanisms have given much
rouble due to freezing up because of
moisture collecting from the air. Efforts
are being made to solve this problem by
constructing a mechanism so that there is
ittle or no metallic contact from the out­
side through to the inside of the insulated
cabinet. Dry ice has also promised relief
The Delamat Automatic Store for selling
foods requiring Refrigeration.
from the collecting of moisture on the
mechanism; packages had a tendency to
stick together or to the metal parts of the
cabinet; the Goodrich Rubber Co. proc­
ess of coating metal with rubber has
been used by some experimenters with ice
cream venders. These are only a few of
the score or more difficulties that have
tended to plague those striving away to
perfect venders for these products. All
in all, the problems are so many that the
final construction necessary to overcome
them often results in a machine that is
too expensive to be practical for general
use. This is especially true of -the venders
for selling ice cream and frozen con­
fections.
Beverage Dispensers
Beverage dispensers are of two types,
those designed to sell bottled drinks and
SELLMORE MERCHANPISElCODRoiN OPERATED DEVICES
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