BIRTH-PLACE OF ROBOTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 115, 18 May 1933, Page 6

BIRTH-PLACE OF ROBOTS.

It is estimated that several million pounds in pennies are put into automatic machines every year, and a remarkable new industry has sprung up to supply the ever-increasing demand for these "mechanised salesmen" (says the "Observer"). This is one of London's little-known industries. London has quite a number of realiy substantial industries of which, probably to the agglomerate nature of the metropolis, the population is practically unaware. Many thousands of people are employed in the production of automatic machines, and London is achieving a world-wide reputation for these articles. Few Londoners realise that when the citizens of some middle-western town in America pay their nickel tribute to Greta Garbo they may receive their tickets from a machine made in London; or that London provides the inhabitants of Palestine with stamp machines, suitably inscribed .in English, Hebrew, and Arabic; or that Swedish bus°conductors punch London-made tickets with London punchers. One firm produces 50,000 miles of tickets a year. Similarly most of the penny-in-the-slot machines which adorn the piers of British seaside resorts come from London. A representative of the "Observer" visited one of the f<ictoi ies "\s hoi e all kinds of these ingenious machines' are made. There are something like 40,000 telephone booths which require °coincollecting boxes, and this factorv is kept working at high pressure to meet the'demands of the Post Office. The latest type of prepayment coin box has now been so perfected that it i? the accepted model all over the world, and quantities have been ordered by the telephone authorities in- many of tho Dominions.