In this post I'll briefly look at the fourth of the five mid-century American book vending machines. O. J. Jennings & Company of Chicago introduced the Automatic Library in September 1939 to sell Little Blue Books, published from 1919 until 1951 by Emanuel Haldeman-Julius of Girard, Kansas. Only a few (22 have been identified - see here) of the 2100 Little Blue Book titles were sold through the machines. They were marked as “Published for Automatic Libraries”.
The December 11, 1939 issue of Newsweek has a picture of the Automatic Library and a brief article which says that the “test machines have been installed in subway and bus stations in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, each machine containing eighteen titles at a dime apiece.”
Newsweek December 11, 1939, page 52
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