Inventions
Vending Machine
Mechanical Engineering
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A vending machine is an automated machine that dispenses items such as snacks, beverages or other small goods to a customer after payment is made. A rudimentary coin-operated forerunner was built by the Greek engineer Hero of Alexandria in the 1st century AD, dispensing a measure of holy water when a coin was deposited, but the first modern vending machines emerged in England in the early 1880s, when the inventor Percival Everitt introduced coin-operated machines in London in 1883 that dispensed postcards, establishing the basic mechanism still used in vending machines today.
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