Bridgeton pioneer., 1910-07-28
NOW THE
AUTOMAT STORE
Needs No Clerks and No
Cashier
WAIT ON YOURSELF.
Edison Is Said To Have Invented
An Automatic Grocery
Store

AS a. - OAJ an age VI ludTNeIS. II
is hardly generation since the days
of the high wheel bicycle with the
little whee in front, and now the mo-
tor cycle has largely superseded the
safety wheel, and the first invention is
a curio.
The nickel in the slot restaurant is
but step in i.dvance of the peanut
machines and chewing devices seen on
every street corner. The old fashion
ed grocery store, which has always
been the head center for all news, DO
litical and social, is doomed to go with
all other olden ideas, to make way for
the march of progress.
Thomas A. Edison, of Menlo Park,
this State, the reverend wizard of
science, announced during last week
that he had invented what he called
an Automatic Store, which is a
complete grocery store, supposed to
run without clerks. Here is his own
justification for it:
I'm an automatic store one man
could do the work which is now done
by so grocers. The distributing cost
on every article handled would be
brought down to the minimum and the
poor man, who buys his flour by the
four cent bagful and his coal by the
scuttle could buy as cheaply as the
man who buys his flour by the barrel
and his coal by the twenty-ton lot"
And here is Edison's own dscrip-
ton Of the automatic features of the
electrical store:
"In the automatic shop of the fu-
ture there will be no shopkeepers, no
clerks, no boy to wrap up the pack
ages. On enterig the shop the in
tending purchasers will see no one,
unles it is some other purchaser.
There will be no counters, no scales,
no shelves lined with goods, no show
cases.
"In the wall of the shop there will
be dozens and dozens of little open
ings. Above every opening there will
be small sign. This sign will tell in
a half dozen different languages what
particular article that particular open
ing will deliver.
Suppose a patron wants beans or
potatoes. He will go to the series of
openings that represent the vegetable
department. He will look for the
signs bearing the legend beans" or
potatoes. He dops nickel in the
slot and a neatly tied package con-
tanning cents worth of beans or po-
tatoes, will drop through the opening.
you see that in an automatic shop
there will be no wasting of time in
talk, no pricing of articles, no samp-
ling. Shopping will be an exact,
speedy and businesslike proposition.
And here is another great merit in
an automatic shop, it will be strictly
cash proposition, the shopkeeper's
credit book will be automatically
closed every night when he goes and
collects the nickels from the various
slots,
"The upper part of the automatic
store will be simple adaptation of
machines that are already in use.
There will be rows of bins in which
the various articles will be emptied as
they are purchased from the farmer
or manufacturer. Chutes will lead
from each of these bins down to the
machines, which will automatically
weigh out and tie up the various arti-
cles in 5-cent packages. From each
of the machiness chutes will carry
the various packages down to the
store, and only nickel dropped in the
slot is necessary to have one OF the
packages delivered automatically into
the customers hand.
"Only one man will be needed to
tend this store. All that he will have
to do is to keep the bins filled and the
machinery oiled, and all the rest will
be done automatically. He and his
machine will be doing the work that
in a present day grocery shop is re-
quires fifty men to do"
From information obtained, Edison
has actually made model of an auto
matte store, and claims to have got
ten pefect results fom it. He claims
to have evolved the idea not to make
money for himself, but to reduce the
cost of living and help the poor.
There seems to be no reason why
such plan would not work with a
limited number of easily handled
goods like sugar, tea, coffee or beans,
but that it could be even used with the
general stock unless everything was
packed in packages seems very doubt
full.