No, it isn’t.
The technology was less complicated, but the prices more than made up for it. For a mere quarter, you could select a title, move the lever, and BLAP! your book drops down the chute, all ready to read. Faster than a 3G Kindle download any day.
It dates from 1947, early in the year. It was a time when “mat” was King. Anything worth buying had O-mat attached to it, an abbreviated version of automatic, I presume. There was the chief offender Laundromat – a place where the machines took coins in exchange for clean clothes.
The drawback to the Book-O-Mat was the lack of a sneak preview. It kept the books from getting shopworn from folks thumbing through them, but even the front cover artwork was hidden by the display method. But – what’d’ya want for a quarter?
A solution to that problem was offered a short time later by Rock-Ola, the creator of the Book-O-Mat. Rock-Ola is better known these days as the company that manufactured exotic jukeboxes. The later machines positioned the paperbacks – which were generally called “pocket books” back then – in a manner that offered a view of the front cover.
The Book-O-Mat machine carried a price tag of $175, which – in today’s dollars – equates to nearly two-thousand bucks.
Unlike the eReaders of today, which are advertised as having a viewing surface like “paper,” the Book-O-Mat was so sophisticated that it dispensed actual PAPER products, bound in a heavier printed stock with graphic images.
Man.
My head is spinning.
I don’t have a Book-O-Mat, but for a couple of short stacks of quarters, I’ll do a throwback to some really old-times and hand-deliver a Pocket Book to you in a futuristic thin container designed for easy carrying.
We call it a bag.
Come visit!
McHuston
Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main St. Broken Arrow OK!