ALEXANDRIAN OR HELLENISTIC PERIOD 



full meed of appreciation. To be sure, it marked a 

 most important principle in the conception that steam 

 might be used as a motive power, but, except in the 

 demonstration of this principle, the mechanism of 

 Hero was much too primitive to be of any importance. 

 But there is one mechanism described by Hero which 

 was a most explicit anticipation of a device, which pre- 

 sumably soon went out of use, and which was not re- 

 invented until towards the close of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury. This was a device which has become familiar 

 in recent times as the penny-in-the-slot machine. 

 When towards the close of the nineteenth century some 

 inventive craftsman hit upon the idea of an automatic 

 machine to supply candy, a box of cigarettes, or a whiff 

 of perfumery, he may or may not have borrowed his 

 idea from the slot-machine of Hero; but in any event, 

 instead of being an innovator he was really two thou- 

 sand years behind the times, for the slot-machine of 

 Hero is the precise prototype of these modern ones. 



The particular function which the mechanism of 

 Hero was destined to fulfil was the distribution of a 

 jet of water, presumably used for sacramental pur- 

 poses, which was given out automatically when a five- 

 drachma coin was dropped into the slot at the top of 

 the machine. The internal mechanism of the machine 

 was simple enough, consisting merely of a lever oper- 

 ating a valve which was opened by the weight of the 

 coin dropping on the little shelf at the end of the lever, 

 and which closed again when the coin slid off the shelf. 

 The illustration will show how simple this mechanism 

 was. Yet to the worshippers, who probably had en- 

 tered the temple through doors miraculously opened, 



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