Category Archives: The Liminal Times

Factslap: The first vending machine was made for holy water

Democracy, theater, olive oil, and other bedrocks of Western civilization all got their start with the Greeks. But even some things that might seem like squarely modern inventions have Hellenistic roots, including the humble vending machine.

In the first century CE, Greek engineer and mathematician Heron of Alexandria published a two-volume treatise on mechanics called Pneumatica. Within its pages were an assortment of mechanical devices capable of all types of wonders: a never-ending wine cup, rudimentary automatic doors, singing mechanical birds, various automata, the world’s first steam engine, and a coin-operated vending machine. 

Heron’s invention wasn’t made with Funyuns and Coca-Cola in mind, however: It dispensed holy water. In Heron’s time, Alexandria was a province of the Greek empire and home to a cornucopia of religions with Roman, Greek, and Egyptian influences.

To stand out, many temples hired Heron to supply mechanical miracles meant to encourage faith in believers. Some of these temples also had holy water, and experts believe Heron’s vending machine was invented to moderate acolytes who took too much of it.

The mechanism was simple enough: When a coin was inserted in the machine, it weighed down a balancing arm, which in turn pulled a string opening a plug on a container of liquid. Once the coin dropped off the arm, the liquid stopped flowing. It would be another 1,800 years before modern vending machines began to take shape — many of them using the same principles as Heron’s miraculous holy water dispenser.

And the miracles are just as effective.

Factslap: The Pacific Ocean was so named because Magellan thought it was “pacific,” or peaceful


The  largest and oldest ocean basin on Earth, the Pacific has roughly  twice as much water as the Atlantic. Yet it didn’t receive the name we know today  until the 16th century. On November 28, 1520, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan — after 38 days of weathering the treacherous waters of the strait that’s now named after him at the tip of southern Chile — became the first European to reach the ocean by way of the Atlantic. Happy to have the harrowing journey behind him, Magellan referred to this new ocean as “Mar Pacifico,” meaning “Peaceful Sea.” While the moniker made sense at the time, today we know that both the Pacific and Atlantic can be tumultuous at times.

Yet “Pacific” isn’t the only name this big blue expanse has been known by. In 1513 — seven years before Magellan glimpsed the Pacific — Spanish conquistador Vasco Nunez de Balboa led an expedition across the isthmus of Panama and named the sea he found on the other side the far less poetic “el mar del sul,” or the “South Sea.” However, the most authentic moniker for the Pacific Ocean may be the Hawaiian term “Moananuiākea.” Interestingly, this name — perhaps over a thousand years old — is closely related to the Maori “Te Moana Nui a Kiwa,” meaning the “Great Ocean of Kiwa” (Kiwa being a Maori guardian of the sea). So while “Pacific” is the name most of us now know, it’s certainly not the one used by the people who mapped and sailed the Pacific’s 63 million square miles for centuries before the Europeans arrived.
 

Factslap: The Hollywood sign was originally illuminated with 4,000 light bulbs


The Hollywood sign was originally illuminated with 4,000 light bulbs.
Before it was the Hollywood sign, it was the Hollywoodland sign. That’s what the Los Angeles landmark spelled out when it was first built in 1923, and illuminating the 50-by-30-foot letters at night wasn’t easy — doing so took 4,000 20-watt light bulbs. What’s more, they weren’t all lit up at once: The “HOLLY,” “WOOD,” and “LAND” portions flashed individually before the full sign was illuminated at once. Designed by Thomas Fisk Goff of the Crescent Sign Company, the sign had nothing to do with the film industry originally — it was just an advertisement for a housing development. But as the movie business rapidly expanded over the next few decades under its literal and figurative shadow — and as many of those motion pictures used it in establishing shots as a shorthand for the area — the sign became synonymous with that industry.

During the Great Depression, the sign fell into disrepair, and both the “Land” segment and the light bulbs were removed around 1949, when the L.A. Parks Department and Hollywood Chamber of Commerce took over ownership of the sign. The sign deteriorated again over the next few decades and had to be rescued by a group of celebrities in 1978, at which point it read something like “HULLYWO D.” Alice Cooper, Hugh Hefner, and Gene Autry were among the nine donors who contributed $27,777 apiece to replace each of the original letters with new ones that were 45 feet tall and made of steel. That version is the one still standing today.