In 1897, London’s Lampposts Dispensed Hot Coffee, Tea, and “Fluid Beef”

Any read­er of Vic­to­ri­an lit­er­a­ture will won­der how much a ha’pen­ny was actu­al­ly worth in those days. For a lit­tle more than a year at the very end of that peri­od, it could buy you a cup of cof­fee, cocoa, milk, tea, or “flu­id beef” — which would pour out of a lamp­post on the cor­ner. The Plu­to Lamp, as it was brand­ed, made its debut at the Vic­to­ri­an Era Exhi­bi­tion, which was held in 1897 to cel­e­brate the Queen’s Dia­mond Jubilee.

Amid such attrac­tions as a 360-degree panora­ma of ancient Rome, Pep­per’s ghost illu­sions, and over 1,200 works of art by the likes of J. Turn­er, John Con­sta­ble, and 180 spe­cial­ly select­ed female artists, a bev­er­age-dis­pens­ing street­light might seem mun­dane. Yet apart from being a tech­no­log­i­cal mar­vel in its own way, it also pre­saged the tech­nol­o­gy-sat­u­rat­ed streets one day to come.

Not long after the Vic­to­ri­an Era Exhi­bi­tion, Plu­to Lamps appeared in sev­er­al Lon­don loca­tions, includ­ing Exmouth Street in Clerken­well, Leices­ter Square, and Rose­bery Avenue. In addi­tion to the illu­mi­na­tion of their sur­round­ings, and the drinks warmed by the excess heat thus gen­er­at­ed, they in some cas­es offered post­cards and four-to-the-pen­ny cig­a­rettes for sale as well. How­ev­er much atten­tion the Plu­to Lamps attract­ed as a nov­el­ty, this was still the infan­cy of the mod­ern vend­ing machine, whose defi­cien­cies had yet to be ful­ly worked out.

It proved impos­si­ble, at the time, to defeat the enter­pris­ing scoundrels who used round pieces of tin in place of gen­uine cur­ren­cy, and in any case, main­te­nance costs seem to have proven unex­pect­ed­ly high. (To say noth­ing of the prospect of drink­ing out of an enam­el cup on a chain, shared with the entire pub­lic, which sure­ly put off even some Vic­to­ri­ans.) All of the Plu­to Lamps were decom­mis­sioned before the end of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, but they’d done their bit to expand pub­lic ideas of what was pos­si­ble in the urban pub­lic realm. City infra­struc­ture and street fur­ni­ture would once again become mul­ti-pur­pose, mul­ti-use, entre­pre­neur­ial, and con­nect­ed.” And indeed, though talk of “smart cities” may now sound as dat­ed and unap­peal­ing as that of flu­id beef, lamp­posts have more recent­ly been giv­en such side jobs as vehi­cle charg­ing, envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, and even crime pre­ven­tion. That last brings back to mind the Clerken­well Plu­to Lamp, equipped as it was with a tele­graph recorder con­nect­ed straight to Scot­land Yard: a device that, had it last­ed longer, might have inspired many a Vic­to­ri­an nov­el­ist.

Slot Machine Age: A 1964 British News­reel Angsts Over Whether Auto­mat­ed Machines Will Dis­place Peo­ple Behold the Art-o-Mat: Vin­tage Cig­a­rette Vend­ing Machines Get Repur­posed & Dis­pense Works of Art Jim Pow­er, aka “the Mosa­ic Man,” Adorns the Lamp­posts of New York City’s East Vil­lage French Vend­ing Machines Fill Your Mind with Nour­ish­ing Short Sto­ries, Not Your Body with Junk Food Inside the Automats Where Coin-Oper­at­ed Machines Cre­at­ed a Mod­ern, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Din­ing Expe­ri­ence Watch the “Bib­lio-Mat” Book-Vend­ing Machine Dis­pense Lit­er­ary Delight Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall. by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Comments (0) | We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads.

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