INGENIOUS MACHINE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22968, 21 February 1938, Page 4

INGENIOUS MACHINE

ISSUE OF RAILWAY TICKETS SPEEDING UP IN LONDON [from our own con it kspondkxt] LOXDOX, Jan. 29 Ingenuity seems to be the motto of the London underground railways, on which a new and elaborate ticket machine is being tried. Preliminary tests at one of the largest stations have been so impressive that an extended trial is to be made at another station. Kver.v railway traveller is laminar with the racks of tickets in booking offices, but few passengers are likely to have paused to think how, at the end of his shift, the clerk has to prepare a detailed account of every ticket sold. The new machine not only speeds up the sale of tickets, but also does away with book-keeping. Instead of pre-printed tickets the clerk has at hand a rack of small cylinders looking something like organ stops. He puts the appropriate cylinder in the machine, which then prints and delivers either first or third class, single or return tickets for the desired station. Simultaneously it automatically registers the sale and tots up on a control slip the total business done. Complicated as this all sounds, the machine occupies little more space than a portable typewriter. By the old manual method about eight tickets a minute can be sold. The new machine will print and deliver about a dozen different tickets a minute, and if the same cylinder is kept in the machine it can issue 180 tickets a minute.