C.O.C.A. Times

on with both buyers and sellers alike.
Despite the variety of goods available
from these vendors, their reliability was
often the source of frustration when
mechanisms jammed and the promised
product failed to appear. The earliest
forms of coin detection and merchandise
delivery were notoriously unreliable.
Poor designs, inexpensive materials (for
some vendors), the ravages of weather
(for those vendors placed in exposed
locations), and salty peanuts or pistachios resulted
in frozen mechanisms and frustrated customers.
This resulted in countless design revisions and many
patents for coin operated machines between the
late 1 800s and the start of World War I. What could
be better than a vendor that couldn't be vulnerable
to these problems? A vendor with absolutely no
moving parts? Enter the Gravity Vendor.
the coin raceway and formed the key element that
allowed the machine to function.
In use, the coin would drop directly down a chute
from the entry point in the top of the machine. At
the base of the chute the coin would hit an angled
anvil , bounce off and be sent rapidly across the
raceway. As the coin shot down the raceway, the
top of the coin would meet with the
lower edge of the suspended breath
mint or gumball, bouncing it upward
and free of the pressure of the line
of product behind it in the glass
tube. Once freed, the mint or
- --
gumball fell downward into a col-
lecting tray and out to the waiting customer.
At least three versions of this rare vendor are
known: Two versions of mint vendors with four glass
tubes and a three tube version that advertised the
"latest pepsin gum balls." Each of these three ver-
sions have different delivery faces
suggesting that once they were pro-
duced and placed into service, some
of the design 's flaws became appar-
ent.
The most complex delivery system
is found on what is thought to be
the oldest of the three forms. In
this four tube breath pellet machine
a comb-like delivery port at the bottom of the ma-
chine directs the mints to the waiting customer.
With a heavy iron base, very simple top and extra
heavy glass, this is also the tallest of the three ver-
sions known.
The intermediate form is probably the three tube
gumball version which hides a funnel-like trough be-
hind the Wagner & Miller advertising plaque . This
one carries a paper decal that advertises pepsin
gumballs, though there is no indication of the maker
of these. It is this version that some
have suggested might have been the
first vendor to use round gum, instead
or the tab or stick forms.
The newest of the three machine
versions (from probably around
1 904) also uses a simple U-shaped
inclined ramp to deliver the goods. Remarkably,
none of the known varieties use an eccentric deliv-
ery port and straight ramp as shown in the original
The Gravity Vendor
/
The Gravity Vendor has to be the simplest vendor
ever produced. With no moving part to get out of
adjustment it would seem to have been infallible.
This rare vendor was patented in 1 903. Some ma-
chines indicate that they were produced by the
Gravity Vending Machine
Company of Chicago, Illinois,
and distributed by Wagner &
Miller, of Sandusky, Ohio.
Made of chrome and glass,
this machine consisted of
three or four glass tubes that
held the product, a simple
coin entry at the top and a
coin raceway that ran across
the face of the machine. The
machine was made to sell
small round
balls of ei-
.ff
~ .... = ther breath mints or chewing gum
h:m-~,-------1
which were held single file in the
glass tubes. The lowest ball in the
line rested against a stop and was
supported by a small shelf with a
gap between the stop and the
shelf that was less than the width
of the product. This gap spanned
5