Episode notes
Picture sliding a dollar to a nickel thrower, dropping coins into a brass slot and pulling a slice of pie from behind a little glass door. This deep dive explores the automat, from its 1895 debut in Berlin to Horn and Hardart's gleaming dining halls and its surprising comeback in the contactless era.
We break down the gravity-based coin mechanisms of Max Sielaff, the hidden kitchens restocking the walls from behind, and how automats became class-mixing spaces and safe dining rooms for working women. Then we follow the concept onto passenger trains, into Japan's ticket machines and Dutch automatiek walls, through its collapse, and back again in Philadelphia.
- How automat coin slots tested diameter, thickness and weight without any electronics
- Why Neil Simon called the automat the Maxim's of the disenfranchised
- Why railroads installed automats as the golden age of rail travel declined
- How inflation and the nickel doomed Horn and Hardart, whose last New York location closed in 1991
- The pandemic-era revival led by smartphone-controlled lockers at the Brooklyn Dumpling Shop