AMERICA'S HOTELS

Southland Times, Issue 19659, 9 October 1922, Page 2

AMERICA'S HOTELS

MODERN MIRACLES. The electric service of the modern American hotel is marvellous. There is no .‘ervice a guest asks but may be rendered him through the simple pressure of a button. All the comfopfs of home, all the, quick service demanded by the modern business person, all the luxury of civilisation in its forms of heating, lighting or ventilation, arrive on a slender wire, unseen but powerful. Through a few hundred feet of wire the traveller is fed, groomed, communicates with his fellow man, is kept cool or warm, is entertained, is protected against fire and other danger, and his every want attended. Floors that shift automatically and are replaced by other floors, great tables of hot food which rise through these floors from the kitchens, concealed lights which shed enchanting glow over private chambers and lovely saloons, magic letters of fire that flash messages upon the walls of one’s room, perfect ventilation, revolving fans in the ceilings, wizardry which freezes or boils individual cups of liquids for drinks, unseen power that tidies one and grooms one while lounging at ease before shining mirrors, magical fingers which reproduce one’s writing on rolls above one’s desk, the entertainment of music and song transmitted distinctly from hundreds of miles, and the sound of your own voice taken to a friend as many miles away—all this and much more is what the magic castle by the way—a modern metropolitan hotel—furnishes the traveller of to-day. In the Hotel Ast-oW there is an electric mail box, which registers in an electric sentence in the guest rooms the receiving of individual mail, and an electric switchboard of the housekeeper and room clerk, which controls the house maid service. The labour of conveying a six-course dinner for 1500 or 2000 people from the kitchens to the banquet halls has proved more than human waiters can stand. It is now done by automatic machine and run by electric power. Whenever a guest check-out, the room clerk plugs in his room number. This plugging in results in tiiiy lights appearing in the room section of the main corridor and besides the room door. This blinking light calls the attention of a maid, traversing the corridor with clean linens, for immediate freshening. In hotel language, the room is “on change.” It must be cleaned immediately for the next guest. At the same time that the clerk plugs in the room number he inscribes - it on the telautograph under his time heading. This writing is reproduced on the desk of the head housekeeper in the linen rooms on the twelfth floor. The head housekeeper can leave her desk when she wishes, and when she returns the record of rooms on change is there on her telautograph; which, the moving finger having written, nothing can erase.