The Nome Nugget

COFFEE SLOT MACHINE
NETS VETS A JACKPOT

By BILLIE WHEELOCK
AP Newsfeatures
PHILADELPHIA
A couple of ex-soldiers who staked their brains, brawn and $3,000 on building a vending machine for dealing out hot coffee are heading toward easy street with a business that stands to gross $3,000,000 this year.

Twenty-seven-year-old Lloyd K. Rudd and 28-year-old K. Cyrus Melikan discovered they had a common goal when they met at Wright Field, Dayton, O., in 1945. Each wanted to get into business for himself as a manufacturer.

So 2nd Lt. Rudd and Corp. Melikan began looking for a product. The post commander unwittingly gave them an idea.

"We headed out for the post exchange about 10 o'clock one morning for coffee," Rudd recalled. "But the door was locked and a sign said the post commander had ruled out mid-morning java for the duration."

"We hunted up a soft drink machine, spent our nickels and got to dreaming. Why not a machine to deal out a hot cup of coffee? We talked about it again a few nights later when Mrs. Melikan served instant coffee at their apartment."

Rudd and Melikan, both mechanical engineers, went back to his home in Philadelphia early in 1946. They had models of working parts for a machine, a patent attorney on a retainer in Washington, and $3,000 of pooled funds.

"By the time I got out of the Army a month later," Rudd said. "Melikan had sold his dad, a North Philadelphia butcher, on letting us use half of his double-garage rent free."

They set up a company, Rudd-Melikan, Inc., and got the financial support of a super-market owner in Dayton, O.

With a going concern of less than a dozen stockholders, who put up about $75,000, Rudd and Melikan hired an electrical engineer, Kirk Mahigian, and turned out their first model machine.

Their robot coffee server responds to a nickel with a paper cup, a small wooden spoon, steaming hot coffee and sugar and cream if the customer pushes the designated buttons.

The machine, which sells for $750 to $850 (depending on the number purchased), holds 450 cups and uses liquid coffee concentrate and simple syrup.

"We abandoned using powdered coffee and cube sugar because of problems caused by steam in the machine and moisture in the room," Rudd said.

Some 400 of the machines are now in use throughout the country.