I at once responded to this invitation, and immediately beheld the little tableaux become moving and life-like; the cabs rolled along, and the passers-by walked up and down the street. A number of visitors followed my example, and there is no doubt the money-box was full at the end of the day. This ingenious contrivance for obtaining money in so easy a manner, and without having recourse to a “show-man,” appeared to me worthy of investigation and description.
The Scientific American (New York) has recently given an explanation of this curious contrivance, and we will here quote what has been published on the subject.
“Among the inventions intended to obtain contributions of money from the visitors at the Philadelphia Exhibition,” says the American writer, “we will describe the singular money-boxes placed in the salons of the principal hotels and the galleries of the exhibition, etc. These contrivances all consisted of a case or box, with a glass front, through which can be seen a landscape in miniature, with trees, houses, figures, etc., all cut out of cardboard, and painted with great nicety. On the box was a label requesting the visitor to drop a coin into it and await the result of the contribution. When the penny has fallen in it puts in motion some hidden machinery, and then we see the people in the miniature landscape all in motion, riding or walking or hunting, as the case may be.”
Another box is even more successful, for it places in the hands of the contributor a photograph of some celebrated person. But to obtain the photograph we must contribute six pennies. The carte will not come out if we do not put in the proper coins, and the apparatus is perfectly fair and honest.
The illustration, fig. 872, shows the apparatus, which is very simple. On the left the ordinary box is seen, on the right there is a longitudinal section of it.
At the top of the lower portion, where the money is received in, is a hollow support, A, which sustains the box in which the photographs are placed upon an inclined plane, and resting against the glass. The pieces of money, in falling, strike the extremity of a vertical balance, which immediately turns a toothed wheel, C. This wheel has as many teeth as there are pieces of money necessary to purchase the photograph or carte de visite. Upon the escapement wheel is a ratchet arrangement, D, the shaft being moved by a cord rolled around it and attached to a spring, E. A bolt, F, moved by a spring, is kept constantly pressed against the “snail,” D.
Fig. 872.—American money-box.
Thus at each revolution, as the parts of the machinery are animated by the same movement, the bolt is withdrawn sufficiently to permit a carte to fall, and then the card next following will be ready resting upon the bolt. The photographs being placed upon an inclined plane, are pushed forward by a movable frame, G, which has a roller at the base. So as one card falls out another is immediately replaced close to the glass.
We have remarked that the wheel has six teeth, so that as one piece of money dropped in moves it one-sixth of its revolution, six pieces will be necessary to produce the card. Of course wheels can be made with one or more teeth, and the payment may be varied for valuable objects at the desire of the possessor.