The Biblio-Mat: A Random Book Dispensing Machine

Alasdair Allan is a scientist, author, hacker and tinkerer, who is spending a lot of his time thinking about the Internet of Things. In the past he has mesh networked the Moscone Center, caused a U.S. Senate hearing, and contributed to the detection of what was—at the time—the most distant object yet discovered.

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April 19th, 2013 2

The BIBLIO-MAT from Craig Small on Vimeo.

The Monkey’s Paw is an antiquarian bookstore in Toronto that now also houses the world’s first randomizing vending machine for old books — the Biblio-mat.

“I went fishing this past summer with Craig Small, co-founder of The Juggernaut, an animation studio in Toronto,” says Stephen Fowler owner of the Monkey’s Paw bookstore, “I had this idea that I would love to have a vending machine that gave out random books. I pictured it as a painted refrigerator box with one of my assistants inside; people would put in a coin and he would drop a book out. But Craig is more pragmatic and visionary then I am. He said, ‘You need to have an actual mechanical vending machine.’ That was beyond my wildest imaginings, but not Craig’s, so he just built it for me.”

(via the Quill & Quire)