Growing up, this New York City kid spent summers visiting family in the north of England. You can imagine my long list of cultural dislocations: just three television channels? Milk in a glass bottle, delivered to your door? A seven-sided coin? Free hospitals? One of the most fascinating rituals I remember was riding the bus, when, after boarding, you’d be visited by a uniformed man with a strange steel apparatus strapped to his chest. He’d ask your destination, press some clacky buttons, crank a lever, and out would pop a printed ticket, customized just for you. It was mesmerizing, and probably foreshadowed my love affair with the laser printer and graphic design generally. Later, I’d learn from Wikipedia that this device was the ‘Gibson A14 ticket machine,’ and that it was sadly decommissioned nearly thirty years ago. But I’ve been happy to learn that there are other such contraptions out there. Above: the ‘big red’ that I take to have been used by the Leipziger Straßenbahn, weighing over 22 lbs (9.9kg), and retired in 1917. Below: the green Model 3A (‘Peacemaker’) and red Model 5A (‘Romanov’) probably from the Nikolaevskaya Railway, circa 1905; and finally, a machine known only as ‘froggy,’ found at the Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi, commissioned by nasa as part of their 1961 initiative to foster low-price space tourism.

Published December 5, 2022. Copyright © 2022 Jonathan Hoefler.