MORE-THAN-HUMAN MACHINE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23591, 30 August 1938, Page 20

MORE-THAN-HUMAN MACHINE

SORTS. COUNTS. AND TESTS

COINS

SYDNEY ENGINEER’S INVENTION

(From Our Own Correspondent)

SYDNEY, Aug. 19

A machine which sorts, counts, and tests mixed coins has been installed at the head office of the Bank of New South Wales here. It is claimed to be the only machine of its kind in the world.

At a demonstration, it handled hundreds of coins—pennies, florins, shillings, sixpences, and threepenny pieces—and, without faltering, threw each kind into a separate bag, counted them separately, and rejected all the spurious coins. Each coin was tested electrically in onetenth of a second, and on the mixed lot the machine worked at the rate of £IOOO an hour. It will save an enormous amount of work. On big race days the bank may received between £2OOO and £3OOO in mixed coins. Before the sorting was .mechanised two men were required to sort the money, and up to about 20 men to count it. Now the same work will be done mechanically in less than three hours, and the men will be released for more important duties. This installation is a further step in mechanisation of coin handling at the bank. In a special room in the vaults a whole battery of machines put through about £7,000,000 in florins and shilling every year. A special counting and wrapping machine handles £IOO worth of pennies an hour, turning them out in neat cylinders, each containing 60 coins. It can count and wrap halfpennies, shillings, and two-shilling pieces, and only a minute is required to change it from one denomination to another. Another machine of the same type counts and wraps sixpences and threepenny pieces. These two are claimed to be the only ones of their kind in the world. One of them can do the work of 12 men. The machines were all invented by and installed by Mr R. J. Lyttle, a Sydney engineer.