Fraternity-Testvériség, 1964 (42. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1964-10-01 / 10. szám

FRATERNITY

11

THIS AUTOMATED AGE

A hurried glimpse of “What the Butler Saw” was the limit of coin- in-the-slot machines in grandfather’s day. Not so today. The busy tinkle and click of self-service vendors can be heard selling almost everything — from food and drink to cosmetics, from cigarettes to stockings.

You can wash or dryclean your clothes, you can listen to your favorite pop singer while sipping a soda, or you can have your shoes shined. All by courtesy of a coin-in-the-slot machine. If you run out of film for your camera, there’s a machine to satisfy your needs. Want a postage stamp? Voila! Another machine!

The most recent entry in the coin-in-the-slot race is an automatic, coin-operated 25c car wash. Now the car owner, dressed in his Sunday best if need be, can wash his own car in as little as five minutes.

Until the introduction of the new Sofspra coin-operated car washing machines, American car owners had only one choice. This was between washing their cars themselves with home bucket, brush and garden hose or getting them washed by someone else.

To wash a large car thoroughly is hard work, so many cars were

not washed as often as necessary. Conventional car washing concerns

were expensive, because of the high cost of investment, plant, equipment and labor.

The coin-operated automatic car wash is beginning to solve one of

America’s greatest laundering problems — how to keep clean more than 70 million automobiles collecting dirt and grime on our highways and

byways day after day.

With prices ranging from as low as a quarter for five minutes,

the coin-operated car wash offers soft water and chemical compounds ideally suited to car cleaning. Dispensers provide chamois-like towels for car windows, and coin-operated vacuum cleaners can be had for

cleaning car interiors. All of the equipment is ingeniously designed for easy, speedy, thorough car cleaning.

Franchises for Sofspra coin-operated car wash operation, offered by Chicago-based ALD, Inc., originators of the famous coin-operated self- service laundry and drycleaning stores, is attracting the attention of

small-business investors throughout the country. Very little capital is needed, plus only a minimum of personal management. — Automatic car washes are to the car what the solidly established coin-operated

Laundromat laundry store is to clothing.

With vending machines servicing so many of our needs in the soaring sixties, it is difficult to think of a day and age without them. Yet is was only 76 years ago — in 1888 — that the very first coin- operated, automatic vending machine was introduced. It was the humble penny gum dispenser.