Radley Balko of reviews Christopher D. Salyers’s Vending Machines: Coined Consumerism in the latest issue of Reason magazine. Balko observes that the anonymity of using a vending machine can make those devices subversive of the conventional standards. I think he’s right. Here’s a bit of his essay:
In his quirky book Vending Machines: Coined Consumerism (Mark Batty), Christopher D. Salyers notes that upon his release from prison, [19th century publisher] Carlisle thought he could skirt laws banning controversial books by constructing a machine that “dropped a customer’s desired book after money was inserted and a dial positioned to a corresponding number.” Carlisle was rearrested anyway, but the liberating potential he saw in the anonymity of automated vending has certainly been validated.
For nearly a century before the Internet put the anonymous consumption of vices literally at the world’s fingertips, vending machines dispensed taboo wares, experiences, and entertainment free from the gaze of prying eyes. Salyers argues that the first vending machines in wide use were the snuff and tobacco boxes in 17th century English taverns, appropriate forerunners to the ubiquitous, plastic-handled cigarette dispensers that populated bars, bowling allies, and restaurants in the second half of the 20th century.
Be it the condom machine in the gas station bathroom, the coin-operated peep show, the pinball craze that prompted a moral panic in the 1940s, truant hoods spending afternoons in smoke-blanketed video game arcades in the 1980s, or the rebellious rock ’n’ roll dispensing jukebox, there has always been a subversive element to coin-operated commerce. Even the Norman Rockwell–celebrated Coca-Cola machine has gone rogue, as public health activists now fault soda and candy—and, in particular, the widespread availability of both through vending machines—for the fattening of American children.