COIN IN SLOT

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18536, 5 April 1930, Page 15 (Supplement)

COIN IN SLOT

NOVEL AMERICAN GARAGE. The slot machine garage has arrived. It operates on the endless belt principle, and to the motorist parking his car in it w T ould seem much like boarding a feiris wheel. In the wheel, one seat at a time is stopped at the boarding platform on the ground. When filled it moves upward automatically, bringing the next seat in rotation to the ground level. However, the slot machine garage, instead of occupying a wide, wheel-shaped space overhead, is like two elevator shafts side by side. One shaft carries incoming cars upward and the other side brings them down again to street level. Two endless chains move up one shaft, over ■wheels at the top and down the other shaft, passing under wheels there to turn upward again. Btween the chains are slung platforms, like rigid flat hammocks, each one large enough to hold one car.

The machinery moves automatically when the right lever is pulled and there is one lever for each platform. The apparatus can be run by attendants, or run without them, by a slot mechanism in which the motorist’s quarter gives him the key to a lever. He pulls it, and the belt moves until the platform which is his “space” comes to street level.