Silent Salesmen

U.S. coffee drinkers, who down some 94,000,000,000 cups a year, might drink a lot more if they could get it simply by pushing a button. And Chicago's Bert E. Mills Corp. (automatic vendors) thought the idea worth trying. So' last week it unveiled its newest gadget--an automatic coffee vendor. From piped-in water and powdered coffee, the machine makes an electrically heated brew, for 5-c- Its four buttons serve a paper-cupful with cream or sugar, both, or neither.

The coffee dispenser is the latest gadget in the slot-machine industry, which has rapidly expanded to a jackpot gross of $500,000,000 a year. Automatic vendors now sell thousands of items, golf balls, perfume whiffs, laundry, toilet seat covers, insurance policies and hot dogs with mustard. In the offing are machines to sell 1) milk, butter, and ice cream in apartments, and 2) gasoline in automatic stations.

At the moment, the industry is plagued by odd-cent price rises (e.g., candy bars have gone up to 6-c-), which have forced operators to either 1) continue selling for a nickel and absorb the rise themselves or 2) charge a dime and pack 4-c- change in with each bar. But the industry hopes to lick this problem with a machine that will make change for any coin.

Aside from local distributors, this booming business is shared by nearly 200 manufacturers. Among the biggest are Rowe (cigarets), Du Grenier (cigarets and candy), Mills (unrelated to Bert E.) Novelty (Coca-Cola and familiar "one-arm-bandit gambling machines") and Automatic Canteen (snacks). The industry has lately attracted such companies as Bell Aircraft (coin changer) and General Electric (hotdog cooker).

No Slugs Need Apply. But the most potent name in the industry is that of a company which makes comparatively few complete machines: National Slug Rejectors, Inc., of St. Louis. National Slug is the keystone of the entire industry: it makes the part of vending machines which rejects counterfeits and slugs. President and principal stockholder is John Gottfried, 46, a stocky, grey-haired, German immigrant. He had tinkered with gadgets for years before he stumbled on the simple system of his rejector. *He first tried to put his invention across in 1928. The effort failed. John Gottfried said that perhaps "people were more honest in those days." But in the depression honesty dwindled and slugs increased. Gottfried tried again in 1935, and found a ready market. Now in his big, new St. Louis factory, 283 employes turn out 96% of all the slug rejectors made in the U.S. (fitted for coins of the U.S. and 23 other nations).

Like the rest of the industry, National Slug is also looking ahead. In the works are: 1) a machine that will sell fresh meat and fish at odd prices (e.g., a pound of fish for 38-c-); 2) a soft-drink dispenser that will take as large a coin as a quarter, return 20-c- in change. In ten years, the happy gadgeteers expect the automatic vending industry to be one of the nation's top retailers, gross about $3 billion.

*It consists of a magnetic field which slows the speed of legitimate coins but not of slugs. The speed of the slugs is just enough to trip a separating lever, which throws the slugs into a rejection chute.

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