GoKawiilSaturday Evening Post traces vending machines to Hero of Alexandria's holy-water device
A Saturday Evening Post feature recounts how the vending machine's origins trace back roughly two millennia to Hero of Alexandria, a Greek engineer in Roman Egypt who built a coin-operated device to dispense holy water in temples using a lever and counterweight mechanism. The article notes that automated vending did not resurface until 1615 England, when simpler coin-operated boxes began selling tobacco and snuff in pubs, following the Renaissance rediscovery of Hero's writings and wider circulation of standard coinage.