IMPROVEMENTS IN MONEY TILLS OR APPARATUS FOR HOLDING CHANGE
Year: 1881

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by George Edmund Absell at the Office
of the Commissioners of Patents on the 4th February 1881.
GEORGE EDMUND ABSELL, of 157, Queen's Crescent, Kentish Town, North West
London. "IMPROVEMENTS IN MONEY TILLS OR APPARATUS FOR HOLDING
CHANGE."
This Invention of improvements in money tills or apparatus for holding change
relates to those apparatus wherein the change in silver to be given for a gold coin
is locked up ready for delivery, and only to be procured by the placing in the till
of the proper weighted coin for which the change is to be given, such appreciation
of the value being determined by the operator, and not by the apparatus.
On a suitable plate I arrange a revolving disc carrying on it as many cups to
hold the change as it is desired; each cup is provided with a hinged bottom, and
the cups revolve over the plate. Immediately in front there is an aperture, through
which the hinged bottom of each cup as it comes to this cup in the plate can fall
down and discharge the change previously placed there. Above the cups is a
platform covering the cups, and on this is placed the shoot or mouth piece for the
coin. The shoot is arranged by a tortuous course or other device to prevent the
insertion of a wire or other instrument to tamper with the mechanism beneath.
On falling from the mouth piece the coin ultimately reaches a nearly vertical
position, where it rests for a moment on the end of a lever.
Projecting out of a circle enclosing the cups, and below the platform covering
the cups is the end of a movable lever, the lever being pivotted at a convenient
point to the platform; the lever moves in a small arc of a circle, controlled in
one direction by a stud depending from or attached to the other end of the lever,
upon which the coin has been described as resting momentarily; depending or
attached to near the end of the movable lever, but within the compartment and
covering up the cups, is a depending stop, which falling upon each edge of the
cups, allows them to rotate in one direction together with the disc, but prevents
their backward movement.
The action is as follows:-The cups having been charged with change, the
operator on taking a coin, say a sovereign, assures himself that it is full weight and
a good coin by a balance and other means; then he drops it into the mouth piece;
it falls from thence on to the lever depressing this by its weight, it allows the

page_text: movable lever to be operated through the arc of the circle, now free to move by
partial depression of the lever and elevation of the catch; the operator accordingly
moves the lever, say, to the right, this brings one of the cups to the opening in the
The sovereign
platform, and the change, say 20/, drops through the opening.
having dropped from its position of rest by the movement of the movable lever,
falls into a convenient receptacle. A spring on the movable lever takes it back to
its former position ready for another operation when the lever on which the coin
rested has again locked it, pending the fall of another sovereign.
The apparatus is suitably mounted and covered in and protected by a lock, a
small opening in the cases shows the number of each cup as it comes to the front,
and thus the state of the change can be seen at a glance.
A weighted lever is arranged of sufficient power to retain the hinged bottom of
each cup in position when empty at the point of discharge, but not of sufficient
weight to prevent the change from dropping out, the depression of this bottom
of the cup by the weight of the change raising the other end of the lever, and
with it a pin which locks the disc, so as to avoid tampering with the cups on the
disc.