|
|
|
|
|
|
AUTOMAT
An automat was a form of restaurant where simple foods and drink were served by coin-operated vending machines. The machines took only nickels. A cashier would sit in a change booth in the center of the restaurant, behind a wide marble counter with five to eight rounded depressions in it. She would serve many customers at once, taking their money from the depressions and dropping nickels in its place. The diner would insert the required number of coins and then slide open a window to remove the meal, which was generally wrapped in waxed paper. The machines were filled from the kitchen behind.
Unlike modern vending machines, food was served on real crockery with metal utensils, and drinks in glasses.
Inspired by the Quisiana Automat in Berlin, the first automat in the U.S. was opened June 12, 1902 at 818 Chestnut St. in Philadelphia by Horn & Hardart. [1] The automat was brought to New York City in 1912 and gradually became part of popular culture in northern industrial cities. Horn & Hardart was the most prominent automat chain.
The format was threatened by the growth of suburbs and the rise of fast food in the 1950s; by the 1970s their remaining appeal was strictly nostalgic. Another contributing factor to their demise was undoubtedly the inflation of the 1960s and 70s, making the food too expensive to be bought conveniently with coins, and in a time before bill acceptors commonly appeared on vending equipment. The last fixed U.S. automat closed in 1991.
Another form of the Automat was used on some passenger trains, the last U.S. example being an Automat car on Amtrak's short-lived service to Janesville, Wisconsin in 2001. These were limited by mechanical problems, since the machines weren't necessarily intended for the bumpy ride on the rails, and state laws which prohibited alcoholic beverages from being sold by a machine.
The automat food format is still popular in some other countries. For example, FEBO stores in The Netherlands, where the automat is called Automatiek, provide a variety of burgers, sandwiches, and krokets in vending machines that are back-loaded from a kitchen.
Automats in movies
- The workings of an automat were shown in Easy Living (1937).
- In The Devil and Miss Jones (1941), Charles Coburn got his finger caught in an Automat window offscreen.
- An automat is featured in Ladies' Man (1947), at least according to http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039544/ IMDB]
- "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend", sung by Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), contains the line A kiss may be grand but won't pay the rental on your humble flat or help you at the Automat.
- In The Apartment (1960), Jack Lemmon says to Shirley MacLaine that last Christmas [he] had an early dinner at the Automat.
- In That Touch of Mink (1962) Doris Day’s friend Audrey Meadows stocks the machines in an automat, and there is a lengthy (humorous) scene set there.
- Tom and Charlie make plans in the Horn & Hardart in the 1990 film Metropolitan.
- An Automat is featured in the 1998 film Dark City.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has a replicator-based self-service restaurant called the Replimat, as a play on Automat.
- In a 1967 episode ("It's a Mod Mod World," Part 1) of the sitcom That Girl, struggling actress Ann Marie (played by Marlo Thomas) was able to have a cheap lunch by first buying a bowl of hot water and some crackers from an automat. She then created a rough approximation of tomato soup by pouring freely available ketchup into the hot water. Her efforts catch the eye of a famous English photographer, which establishes the premise for a two-part episode.
See also
External links
|
|
|
|
|
|
|