Thanks, Anita, for the interesting history, as well as the memories 
stirred ... who would have thought the very first vending machine would 
have been necessary to keep religious pilgrims honest in apportioning 
holy-water?

The 1952 model candy machine linked as an example in the article ( 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CandiesVendingMachine1952.jpg ) 
is IDENTICAL to the one that sat in the alcove at the entrance-way to 
the Principal's Office in my high-school (Mineola, Texas) from which I 
purchased about a BAZILLION candy bars for a nickle apiece during the 
mid-60s.

I have seen IDENTICAL machines (as I am sure anyone older than about 
50-years-of-age has) in airports, rail-stations, bus-terminals and 
restaurants around the world, throughout the 70s-80s-90s ... up until 
about 2000 when the electronics versions seem to have supplanted them. 
It must have been an extraordinarily widely-distributed, well-built, and 
long-lived model! I'll bet most of the old-soldiers were still working 
when they were carted-off-to-the-crusher to be replaced by the new ones 
with flashy LED lights and dollar-bill-changers ;)

Bob Skiles


On 8/5/2015 12:19 PM, Anita Cohen-Williams wrote:
> An excellent article on the history of vending machines: The History of
> Vending Machines Goes Back to the 1st Century | Atlas Obscura
> http://ow.ly/Qx6MB
>
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