Re: hot dog

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Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Since Terry has let this go on so long I have to add this.  Not long
after C&H sales started they had a small store in which I used to
browse.  One day I found some kind of apparatus with quite a bit of
1/32" red fiber sheets in it.  (Same kind of fiber you used to see in
cheap Japanese products.)  Couldn't figure out what the rest of it was
(mostly rusty sheet metal) but the fiber looked useful and the price was
right so I bought it for the fiber (wish I had some now).  A bit later
they had some more and I found out what it was.  Someone had gotten the
idea of a cheap hot dog dispensing machine called "Jiffy Dog".  It had a
bunch of slots loaded with hot dogs in buns, with a spike stuck in each
end.  When someone put his coin in the machine one of the slots rotated
in front of the door and 115VAC was applied to the pins through a timer,
then the door opened.  The reason they were in the surplus store was
that no one had thought in advance about the fact that the buns would
get soggy and inedible, even though they were refrigerated (I think,
never saw more than the dispenser part of the machine).

	On the subject of direct line operated stuff, when I was a kid one of
my friends made an arc light from a pair of #6 dry cell carbons and a
line cord.  To operate the cord was plugged in the wall and the carbons
brought together and then separated.  At that point the house lights
dimmed and the arc started.  When I asked him why the fuse didn't blow
he pointed out that there was a penny in it!  True story of the distant
past.

Ed