When the Coke machine where I work broke
down, I was delighted.
We live in an amazing age of
consumer products with new ones entering the marketplace every day. There does
not seem to be any new product that cannot be “improved” within a few months.
I recently fixed a friend’s laptop.
It had a virus too tenacious for normal software to screen and then eliminate.
Normally, cleaning a computer is easy but I had to contend with Windows 8. You
know, an improved Windows 7, an improvement of Windows XP, Windows 2000,
Windows ME, Windows 98, Windows 95, Windows (1.0, 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, 3.1).
When I first worked on a computer,
I word processed in an IBM program called DisplayWrite, version 1.0. I enjoyed
it because it was simple and straightforward. IBM improved it but by the time
DisplayWrite 4 came out, the program was, for me, unusable. IBM improved it so
much they killed it.
But what does this have to do with
a Coke machine?
When I was a laboratory gopher the
summer of my sophomore year in high school, I had a slew of duties at the lab
in between getting to do some really exciting projects, one which was for the
Apollo Program related to the Moon rocks we were to bring back from the five lunar
landings. As they say, “that’s a story for another day.”
Among my mundane duties was acting as the
projectionist for slide shows when graduate students were required to make a
presentation. Another one was walking around the earth station’s campus retrieving
articles left behind by my absent minded professor boss, Dr. Paul Gast. He was
a brilliant scientist but when it rained he’d leave his raincoat in one building,
his umbrella in another and his galoshes in a third. My job was to go on a
scavenger hunt to find these droppings, and of course, there were more
droppings on rainy days.
[Dr. Gast was so absent-minded that
he always ate the lunch his wife packed as soon as he arrived at work so he wouldn’t
forget to eat at lunch time. I often wonder how he remembered to do that first
thing in the morning.]
And then there was the job
refilling the Coke machine. One key opened the small compartment on the front
of the machine. Just below the mechanism that recorded the coin total was a
small metal box usually filled with mostly dimes and nickels. I would take the
money and give it to Dr. Gast’s secretary. The compartment was then closed and
locked and the entire front of the machine hinged open where I would reload the
Cokes. The inside of the machine had a metal conveyor belt that ran all around
the cold refrigerator section, which was at the center.
The machine I filled at the lab.
Each belt of the conveyor held a
Coke, the glass bottle neck stuck out through metal leaves that resembled a
camera lense. After the machine decided you paid the correct amount, it relaxed
the leaves so you could manually pull the bottle out. A silver crank lever, prominently
centered on the machine would push down, advancing the conveyor belt, moving
the next bottle into position, behind a silver door.
The whole idea of the machine was
so simple that Coca-Cola could not resist improving. Now, 48 years later, we
have the model in our pantry that has broken down. This is the machine with
about 5 rows of soda or canned drinks and when you deposit your money you will
be treated to a stupendous display of unnecessary machine maneuvers which will
take several seconds before you receive your order. First you have to feed
money into the machine but woe unto thee if thou selectith your Coke too quickly.
The improved machine
The computer will not spit product unless it
takes a moment to count up what you shoved in and then displays it on the
digital readout. If you punch a selection too fast, the machine is too slow and
confused to do anything about it. The machine, mind you, has enough
electronics, which if rearranged, could perform a lunar docking procedure and
bring men back successfully from the Moon. But as assembled and configured here,
data entry at too fast a pace just confuses poor HAL.
Apollo 11 Command Capsule
at the Smithsonian
But let’s assume you had a
momentary pause of patience, you put the correct amount of money for the
purchase down its metal throat, and now like a stick thrown to a dog, the
machine hurriedly goes off on a jaunt for your bottle of Coke. It reminds me of
when you have a stick or ball and the anxious dog gets so excited he doesn’t know
where to go. He follows your hand as you feign a throw in several different
directions before releasing the stick or ball.
The machine goes berserk, this
plastic cupping holder races up and down the rows, searching for the selection.
Then it excitedly brings it proudly back to the tiny side door but not after
almost missing the level of the door. It jerks up and down zeroing in on the
exact level to equal the door’s opening. The Coke drops with a clank-thud on
the floor of a plastic teeter-totter which then angles out, presenting you with
your purchase. All in a mechanical expression of “look what I just did—how cool
is this?”
I stand in awe of how much energy I
just burned to get a Coke in 2014 compared to almost negligible energy when I
bought that same Coke in 1967 (Oh, remember, they tried to improve on that Coke
in 1985 but then gave up). I realize I just witnessed enough energy being burned
to make a Prius owner blush. Moreover, this improved machine made me wait about
ten times as long to get my Coke as the Coke 1.0 version.
WALL-E
When the machine broke the last
time, the plastic arm sat in frozen animation for about 10 days before people
in the mother ship got the message that this particular machine wasn’t burning
enough electricity to light up an Iraq village. Sometime during my vacation
last week they fixed WALL-E and now we can watch a dazzling mechanical show as
we wait for our Coke to be delivered,
making a journey of about 10 feet instead of moving 5 inches in under a half
second.
I sure hope they stop improving
things.
