Arizona Silver Belt

"There is nothing new under the sun." We fondly hoped that the automatic "put-a-penny-in-the-slot" machine might prove an exception to the rule. Not a bit of it. It is as old as modern European civilization, and a good deal older. The old Egyptian temple devices of this kind were employed for automatically dispensing the purifying water. A coin of five drachmae dropped into a slot in a vase set a simple piece of mechanism like a well-sweep in motion; a valve was opened for an instant, and a portion of the water permitted to escape. This apparatus was described by Hero of Alexandria, who lived two hundred years before the Christian era. --Christian At Work.