Automat (was: Japanese English)

BP Jonsson wrote:

> Actually _automat_ means 'vendor machine' in Swedish,
Perhaps a borrowing from American English.  The Automat chain of restaurants
in the U.S., founded in Philadelphia in 1902 and now extinct, served
a variety of sandwiches and other dishes through an early prototype
of a vending machine, invented in Germany.

One placed a coin of the correct value in the
correct slot, which allowed the correct door to be opened, whereupon
one removed one's comestible.  A restaurant worker then refilled the
compartment from the rear.  The Automats provided fairly cheap food
for the time: probably Swedish sailors ate in them a lot.  :-)

The Automats were also notorious for indifferent service, particularly for
snatching up your plates as soon as you were finished eating from them.
One philosopher remarked, "I finished just in time!".  I remember eating
there only once, but I was no more than five at the time and was chiefly
fascinated with the little glass doors.

"Automat" and its parent company "Horn and Hardart" are still occasionally
used metaphorically to signify something cheap, efficient, low quality (though
in its glory days Automat food was fairly good, I'm told), or providing
free choice.

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