Times Square Blizzard Cam

Go to http://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/timessquare/?cam=7thbroadway and you can watch the NYC blizzard live from Times Square. 100 years ago I would have to wait days to hear about it, now I can sit in my warm office and watch it live. Its wonderful.

Quote: EvenBob

Go to http://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/timessquare/?cam=7thbroadway and you can watch the NYC blizzard live from Times Square. 100 years ago I would have to wait days to hear about it, now I can sit in my warm office and watch it live. Its wonderful.

I got the same cam, its my window and I'm looking at the blizzard from Ct.

Quote: EvenBob

Go to http://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/timessquare/?cam=7thbroadway and you can watch the NYC blizzard live from Times Square. 100 years ago I would have to wait days to hear about it, now I can sit in my warm office and watch it live. Its wonderful.

I used to love looking at these cams when I lived in Phoenix. Back in PA not so much.

Quote: EvenBob

100 years ago I would have to wait days to hear about it, now I can sit in my warm office and watch it live. Its wonderful.

You are no spring chicken! I remember:
1. PF flyers
2. The real Sears Catalogue
3. J.C. Whitney auto parts catalogue
4. Disco
5. Johnny Carson and Ed Sullivan on Black and White TV

Quote: Paigowdan

You are no spring chicken! I remember:
1. PF flyers
2. The real Sears Catalogue
3. J.C. Whitney auto parts catalogue
4. Disco
5. Johnny Carson and Ed Sullivan on Black and White TV

We got Sears and Wards catalogs every season. My dad got all his car parts from JC Whitney. They had pages of parts for antique cars too, Model A's and Model T's, all new old stock. We didn't get a color TV till 1968. I bought it myself, it was $400 from Sears for a 16" screen. $400 in '68 is about $2500 in todays money. Now you can get a color TV for under $100, its not fair.

I even remember candy cigarattes, pixie sticks, cap and BB guns, and sugary drinks in little wax coke bottles - along with the real 16 oz. tall bottle of Coca-cola and manual typewriters and write-out, Pan Am & TWA, and later IBM Selectrics and daisy-wheel typewriters. And speaking of snow storms - snow chains for tires!

And BBS bulletin board systems at 300 baud!

There was something about the "non-push-button work" required to have any fun or get anything done back then! - it made for disciplined and resourceful people! Now it's all I-phone apps and wikipedia plagarism.

Quote: Paigowdan

I even remember candy cigarattes, pixie sticks,

I went to the factory where my dad worked in the late 50's and all the wood working equipment was powered by leather belts near the ceiling. The belts were constantly moving and you just pushed a lever on your machine to connect it to the moving belt. It was technology from about 1910 and it worked well, why replace it. OSHA would have a heart attack.

Quote: Paigowdan

You are no spring chicken! I remember:
1. PF flyers
2. The real Sears Catalogue
3. J.C. Whitney auto parts catalogue
4. Disco
5. Johnny Carson and Ed Sullivan on Black and White TV

And you needed pennies for the soda machine, until they went to a nickel, then 6 cents.......

Remember-
1. The Victrola
2. The mimeograph
3. Ether
4. Hockey goaltenders without masks

Quote: dm

And you needed pennies for the soda machine, until they went to a nickel, then 6 cents.......

That one I do not believe. Other than gumball machines I doubt any USA vending machine took pennies. And Coca-cola started at a nickel if I read right.

What strikes me about our society is that ground transportation speeds are so often identical to that of the 1930's. It takes the same time to take a train from San Diego to Los Angeles as it did in 1935.

As nation aafter nation installs newer and better ground transportation (both city to city and within a metropolitan area) our dependence on cars and airplanes is going to strangle us. Maybe we will all be looking at each other through I-Pads instead of moving around.

The Chinese iniative in electric cars may make them the most livable country in the world by the end of the 21st century.

Quote: AZDuffman

That one I do not believe. Other than gumball machines I doubt any USA vending machine took pennies. And Coca-cola started at a nickel if I read right.

I don't give a crap if you believe it or not. And it doesn't especially bother me to be called a liar by you.

Quote: dm

Quote: AZDuffman

That one I do not believe. Other than gumball machines I doubt any USA vending machine took pennies. And Coca-cola started at a nickel if I read right.

I don't give a crap if you believe it or not. And it doesn't especially bother me to be called a liar by you.

Well, I'll give a reply with a little different tone. When I was a youngster in the '50s, most Coca Cola vending machines sold the bottled drinks for a dime, but I did know one where the small bottles were 6 cents each (maybe 7, I'm forgetful). And they did take the penny/ies -- don't remember whether they gave pennies in change or not.

Quote: pacomartin

What strikes me about our society is that ground transportation speeds are so often identical to that of the 1930's. It takes the same time to take a train from San Diego to Los Angeles as it did in 1935.

As nation aafter nation installs newer and better ground transportation (both city to city and within a metropolitan area) our dependence on cars and airplanes is going to strangle us. Maybe we will all be looking at each other through I-Pads instead of moving around.

The Chinese iniative in electric cars may make them the most livable country in the world by the end of the 21st century.

The problem with high-speed rail is that it just doesn't work out in practicality. In the densly populated northeast you could have a 250 mph train, but for how long of a distance can you hit it? And say you get a high-speed rail between two major cities with traffic. Politically, you will be forced to have stops in lots of smaller towns. In PA PTI-PHI could be profitable and a good load factor. But you would be forced to stop in Harrisburg, Altoona, State College, and other stops. Or get stuck behind the routes that did make the stops.

I wish it could happen, but don't see it. As to electric cars, they have been tried off and on for over 100 years. They have failed each time. I fail to see the facination with them.

Quote: Doc

Well, I'll give a reply with a little different tone. When I was a youngster in the '50s, most Coca Cola vending machines sold the bottled drinks for a dime, but I did know one where the small bottles were 6 cents each (maybe 7, I'm forgetful). And they did take the penny/ies -- don't remember whether they gave pennies in change or not.

I will reply to your pose since you replied to mine with good manners. The problem with USA vneding machines taking pennies is that pennies were hard to discern from foreign coins and slugs. This is discussed in one of the "Imponderables" series of books. BTW: The same entry in that book states the only time pennies were given as change was when you got 2 in a pack of cigarettes when a tax raised the price in stores to $.18 but machines had to charge $.20. At the time pennies were still worth more than for fun at the RR Tracks.

As I thought back about that 6 (or 7) cent coke machine a little more, I remembered that it couldn't have given pennies or any other coin as change. The only thing electrical about that vending machine was the refrigeration unit. You put coins in the appropriate slots and pushed hard on a lever to drive the gears of the vending mechanism. I think some of the chilled-water coke boxes like EvenBob described on page 4 of the Hitchhikers thread were the same thing -- electricity only for refrigeration, not vending, and some of them didn't even have refrigeration units, the store operator just dumped crushed ice onto the bottles inside the box.

I don't think there was a lot of concern about slugs for penny machines -- even back then a cent wasn't valuable enough to warrant the effort for an individual to produce the slugs manually. I think some people tried to use washers of the appropriate size. For those who were concerned about cent slugs, one of the difficulties of detecting them may have been that magnetic effects are a common part of the detection method. Back then, there were still quite a few of the 1943 steel cents in circulation, and vendors wouldn't want to treat them as invalid.

I have never been a smoker, but I think I recall cigarette vending machines that sold a pack of matches for a penny. Later, the machines just had an extra button to press if you wanted matches when buying a pack of the cancer sticks, no extra charge for the lights.

Quote: Doc

Well, I'll give a reply with a little different tone. When I was a youngster in the '50s, most Coca Cola vending machines sold the bottled drinks for a dime, but I did know one where the small bottles were 6 cents each (maybe 7, I'm forgetful). And they did take the penny/ies -- don't remember whether they gave pennies in change or not.

I just called a friend of mine who's a Coke collector and he said no Coke machine has every taken pennies. The very first one took a nickel and as years went by it took increments of nickels. Gumball, stamp, and other types of candy machines were the only ones that took pennies.

Well, I definitely saw and used one. It was installed in the recreation hall/bowling alley at the Radford Arsenal (now Radford Army Ammunition Plant) in Virginia. My father bowled in a league when he worked at that plant, and he sometimes took me with him. That would have been in the early to mid fifties. I expect that I remember the machine even now because the pricing was so unusual -- the only one I ever saw with such a setup. I don't know whether the fact that the government owned the facility had anything to do with the pricing or not. It wouldn't surprise me if the entire recreation facility was operated on a non-profit basis. All I can say is that your friend apparently is not aware of all the machines that were ever installed. If one like that still were in existence, I expect it would indeed be a collector's item.

Quote: Doc

If one like that still were in existence, I expect it would indeed be a collector's item.

It probably wasn't a Coke machine.

I am so tired of seeing babyboomers argue about such trivial stuff, and thinking everything that went on in the "fabulous 60's" was so much superior to any other generation's experiences. I saw an article on Yahoo today that about summed it all up for them, and it's exactly what I've been taught my whole life about how that "too bad it's all over" generation would end up. It seems most of them are not prepared for retirement, they're starting their SS draw way too early to make sense, they're upside down on those big houses they kept upgrading to just to impress the younger guys in the neighborhood, and their savings are pitiful to say the least. If you ask me, they spent too much time fooling around with LSD and not enough time with their financial advisors. Adios amigos.

Quote: JerryLogan

I am so tired of seeing babyboomers argue about such trivial stuff, and thinking everything that went on in the "fabulous 60's" was so much superior to any other generation's experiences. I saw an article on Yahoo today that about summed it all up for them, and it's exactly what I've been taught my whole life about how that "too bad it's all over" generation would end up. It seems most of them are not prepared for retirement, they're starting their SS draw way too early to make sense, they're upside down on those big houses they kept upgrading to just to impress the younger guys in the neighborhood, and their savings are pitiful to say the least. If you ask me, they spent too much time fooling around with LSD and not enough time with their financial advisors. Adios amigos.

Its like you work at making yourself unliked, Jerry. You read a thread and ask yourself, hmm, what can I say to piss off the maximum number of people. If I was King of this forum, you'd be bothering a whole new group of poor sots with your sterling comments.

Quote: EvenBob

It probably wasn't a Coke machine.

Perhaps that's an issue of definition: What constitutes a "Coke machine"? The one I am talking about was mostly red, with lettering saying Coca-Cola (maybe "Drink Coca-Cola", but I can't really claim to remember to that level of detail). It had a section that included the coin slots (one for a nickel and one for penny/ies) and a dull, bare-metal lever that was pressed down to operate the vending mechanism. And it sold the small, 6.5 fl. oz. bottles of Coke. Would you consider that a "Coke machine"?

It looked a bit (not exactly) like this machine I found on the web, except this one has a single coin slot and has the product priced at 10 cents. I remember the dual coin slots as being located closer to the lever and being the type that you place the coins in flat against the machine and letting them drop into the slots. You could still see the top of the coins until they disappeared as you pressed the lever down. I don't recall a coin return; the machine did not give change. I recall the top of the machine also being red, instead of white like in the linked image, but with the lettering being in white.

I think the machine in the linked image may be like most of the ones that were around during that era, and it appears to have a more-sophisticated coin handling system. The one I am talking about offered the drinks at the lower price and required one-cent coins. I'm still not remembering exactly whether one or two of the cents were required in addition to the nickel, and it doesn't seem likely I will start to remember that kind of detail after all these years. The 6-cent price seems more reasonable because it would only require one slot for the cents, unless for the 7-cent price they were inserted two-deep.

Since I am not into antiques, I don't really know how to search for documentation about the specific vending machine design , so you are free to accept or reject my statement that I indeed saw and used one (and only one ever) Coke machine of this type between 1951 and 1956 -- I don't think I can narrow the date range any tighter than that. I think the machine itself was perhaps a bit older than that, maybe from the late '40s.

All Coke machines were in increments of a nickel. It was probably not a Coke machine, but had Coke in it.

Quote: EvenBob

All Coke machines were in increments of a nickel. It was probably not a Coke machine, but had Coke in it.

Interesting comment, Bob.

What I think is more interesting, though, is a web page I found with its description of several models of the Vendo machines manufactured for Coca-Cola in the 1940s and '50s. It even describes the emphasis beginning in 1955 to bring in the older machines and convert them from the red with white lettering design, which I remembered and described in my previous post, to the newer design with the white band and red lettering at the top.

The page also says this of the model V-44 and an almost identical model from a different manufacturer: "The machines came priced originally as either 5 cent, 6 cent or 10 cent and with the optional changer, 5 cent, 6 cent, 7 cent or 10 cent."

A picture of the older V-39 machine looks quite similar to the machine I remember, except that it shows the 10-cent price, and the coin slot doesn't look right. I think the one in the picture is equipped with the "optional changer", because it has the coin return slot below the lever and above the bottle opener. Perhaps without the changer, the V-39 had slots like the ones I remember. I highly suspect that the V-39 offered the same pricing options as listed for the V-44. A description under the V-39 photo mentions that the older versions of the V-39 only dispensed the small bottles, like the unit I remember.

I have no idea where you got the information that all Coke machines were operated in increments of a nickel, but I believe (based on both my own experience and the information from the web page) that your information is not correct.

Here is the link to the web page, in case you want to look at it yourself. In my previous post, I asked for your definition of a "Coke machine." Don't you think these Vendo machines qualify?

Here we go again, and the live cams in Times Square
are even better than 2 years ago. http://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/timessquare/

Blizzard tomorrow, be there or be square..

deleted

I like this cam: in Lappland

your cam is gonna be pretty boring because the real snow won't hit NYC till after dark

Quote: EvenBob

Here we go again, and the live cams in Times Square
are even better than 2 years ago. http://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/timessquare/

Blizzard tomorrow, be there or be square..

I'm guessing that the Singing Cowboy in Times Square will be taking a few days off. Why? Hint - he is also called the Naked Cowboy.

Quote: only1choice

I got the same cam, its my window and I'm looking at the blizzard from Ct.

This ConnDot Cam is at Exit 8 I-91 North.

Cantore's in Boston with a yahd stick. Residents should be very afraid. "Where Cantore goes, danger grows".

The Resorts Beach Cam will give you a look at the Atlantic City Boardwalk. It looks like a TV station is setting up now. Wait until it gets light for a better look.

This is a live TV stram from Boston. Pretty entertaining
and the storm just started. They don't show the
commercial's so if you get a still cam, they're on
commercial break.

http://www.myfoxboston.com/category/235888/fox-25-live-video-stream