Everywhere you turn these days you’ll walk into a vending machine in one form or another. The traditional soda and candy machines, along with cigarette and newspaper dispensers, have been joined by a new breed of machines hawking everything from movie rentals all the way up to iPods. These new-fangled machines are a cool addition to an invention that has been around for a long time, but you may actually be surprised just how long.

It is believed that in 250 BC, the mathematician Hero had drawn up an idea for a coin operated machine that would dispense holy water. It took another 200 years for the first actual machine to show up, which it did in a public bath in Rome. The owner placed a basket at the entrance where his customers would place coins into a slot. Anyone thinking they could get smart and steal the coins quickly found that the money was guarded by snakes. Fast forward to 1076, and the Chinese invented a coin operated pencil machine. By the 1700’s cigarette machines were common features in bars and taverns all across the UK.It wasn’t until the 1880’s that vending machines made their first appearance stateside.

The Thomas Adams Company manufactured the Tutti-Frutti gum vending machines and placed them in a bunch of New York trains stations, to great success. By 1905, the US Postal Service was using vending machines to sell stamps, and from there the craze really took off. The cigarette and candy machines were in place by the 1930’s, and by the time World War II rolled around, vending machines were raking in $600 million, an astronomical amount considering that most of the candy in the machines sold for a penny.

Once the war was over, a manufacturing boom took place in the US, and that led to a large number of factories opening up. These new manufacturers were cranking out their goods 24/7, and in an attempt to help keep their workers fresh and wake, they installed coffee machines in their plants. Before long, vending machines with canned sodas and chocolate snacks were sitting alongside the caffeine dispensers. 

Today, the vending industry hauls in around $40 billion dollars annually, and is a business that seems to thrive no matter how bad the economy gets. It’s because of that success that many people now look at vending machines as a solid business opportunity. Just about anything can be popped inside those glitzy glass cases, and folks just can’t seem to resist the goods on display. We may have come a long way since the days of vending machines guarded by poisonous snakes, but given the advancements made over the years, we can only guess at what they will be selling inside them next. 

BY WWW.PERFECTVENDING.BIZ