AUTOMATIC SELLER

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 160, 2 April 1931, Page 11

AUTOMATIC SELLER

Postage Stamp Machine RETIREMENT OF INVENTOR Having invented the automatic stamp-selling machine, so useful a feature of our postal service, Mr. J. R. Dickie, of Devonport, Auckland, has just retired after 40 years in the service of the Post and Telegraph Department. Mr. Dickie got the idea for his invention from the screen. A film in slow motion, away back in the days when movies dazzled a man and left him bewildered, showed a Chinese in changing motions. If photographs could be controlled in that way, thought Mr. Dickie, why not stamps? So he set to work to construct a machine that would deliver stamps from a rotating cylinder. At the Seattle Exposition, 16 years ago, his Invention won the gold medal, grand prize and diploma against allcomers—‘because it worked alone. It needed no power, gave no trouble, took little room, and there was scarcely any possibility that it would go wrong. It depended on the force of gravity, and that alone. The slip of a penny, the click that followed the falling of the coin, and the stamp was delivered. In England, when Mr. Dickie was there in 1907-8, the Government was a little dubious about his invention, and Government departments elsewhere were equally slow to see the possibilities of the machine. The first of bis machines was put into operation iu Wellington in November. 1909, and seven more were delivered to the department in May, 1910. and .were distributed to various centres. It was also on record, in May, 1910, that by “the Installation of the machine at Wellington the stamp clerk has been saved attendance upon an average of 80 purchasers of stamps a day.” What would the total be now?