Summerfield's 'baby' has first birthday
If it would celebrate birthdays it could have celebrated number one yesterday. It didn't. Nobody lit any candles and besides, it's already three generations old. Three generations old and still a baby—new, so new, in that it's one of a kind.
What baby is is a lengthy longitudinal bread-butter-swiss steaketc-line: a cafeteria that operates with or without a human cashier: and, most of all, baby is a test.
A YEAR AGO yesterday, Vendo, vending machine manufacturing company headquartered in Kansas City, Mo., brought their baby about thirty miles and put it on Frank Burge's doorstep. Now, under his administrative care, both mother Vendo and baby are doing fine.
In that year of doing fine, baby has dispensed 279,000 units which, among other things, means handling out 84,000 cups of hot coffee and 32,000 cartons of cold milk and about 70,000 portions of various foods, hot and cold.
And in the time of doing fine, Vendo has taken baby home twice and sent back a re-tooled machine capable of doing more and doing it better.
FOR INSTANCE, coins are now returned in a chromium scoop—a little extra outside for the guys and gals who didn't like reaching into the old lidded boxes—a lot extra because it required a totally different concept of coin passage.
That's one extra outside and in. There have been others and more are considered each day. While the Vendo engineers are considering them, foster-father Burge was babying baby.
When, on that uncelebrated birthday, a Kansas reporter wandered into the Hawklet, a gray-haired man wearing a heather gold knit necktie was quietly plunging a thin thermometer into a cup of black coffee.
"It's got to be between 160 and 164 degrees," gray-haired Frank Burge said, "otherwise the kids can't drink it." It registered about 163 degrees Fahrenheit.
"I JUST CAME down to check on the food supplies." And he checked. Then, over that cup of coffee of which he'd taken the temperature he settled it to talk about that machine and what future ones might be like. He enjoived thinking about it.
"What it essentially is is the problem of automating distribution." And of automating it at a rate consistent with the rate of automated and automating production.
Vendo was trying to do just that last year, when they started this research testing here, Burge said.
"The new food service equipment which has been installed in Summerfield Hall is the first of its kind, a new approach to cafeteria operation which combines both automatic and manual service.
"This equipment will be tested during a three month period ending with the Easter vacation. At that time, it will be removed and the former snack bar and battery of vending machines will be reinstalled."
Well, the machines were called back, improved and sent back again, and again. And, each time, Burge has welcomed them.
"WEVE KNOWN for years that college kids require a lot of high energy food . . . at different times during day end night. The difficulty of finding people who want
to work at night is increasing. This is an answer to that problem."
And the food service center answers that problem by remaining open for business as long as the Hawklet is open. That's almost 24 hours a day.
During all those hours, Burge commends KU students on the way they've treated baby. No banging, slamming or kicking. And, Burge says, baby has responded well.
The center is supplied with fresh food at least three times daily and Burge says that means the left-overs are tossed out. The menus are changed daily too, and it's Burge's hope, as well as Vendo's that the rotating bill of fare, the careful temperature and quality controls, and the ease of operation will woo customers to the unmanned cafeteria.
BUT, JUST in case they prefer the manual set-up, that's available each lunch hour when a cashier takes over and the oper-
VC frees civilians
The three prisoners were released about 40 miles east of Saigon and found by Vietnamese soldiers. The Americans were Thomas R. Scales, 44, of Matamoras, Pa., and Robert W. Monahan, 41, of Brooklyn and Bellport, N.Y.
SAIGON—(UPI)Two American civilians and a Filipino woman were freed today more than six months after they were kidnapped and placed in a Viet Cong prison camp.
Researchers at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City soon will be able to get fast answers from a computer in Lawrence.
U. S. spokesmen said the three—released in a Communist "good will" gesture—were "not in too good of a shape." The American men were employees of an engineering firm. The woman was the widow of an Air America employee who died in Viet Cong captivity last week.
The South Vietnamese government announced, meanwhile, that it plans to release an unspecified number of North Vietnamese war prisoners next month in connection with the start of the Asian new year. But there was no reply to a Viet Cong proposal for an eight-day cease-fire.
Doctors will use computer
A direct hook-up between a small computer in the KU Medical Center in Kansas City and the big, new General Electric 625 computer at the Lawrence KU campus has been a dream of the Computation Center.
Scotland Yard locates stolen art treasures
LONDON — (UPI) — Scotland Yard today announced recovery of several art treasures stolen Saturday in history's biggest art theft.
Scotland Yard said the masterpieces—including three Rembrandts and three Rubens—were actually recovered Monday night. The announcement apparently was withheld until today for investigative reasons.
The paintings were said to be only slightly damaged. All were found in London.
THE RECOVERY announcement came amid mounting fear the eight masterpieces might have been irreparably damaged or even removed from Britain.
Recovery of the loot climaxed a massive operation of raids, searches and questioning throughout southern England. Eight masterpieces in all were stolen from the Dulwich College art gallery by a burglar or burglars who drilled a hole in a door.
It wasn't immediately known if there were any arrests. The prime search targets have been a slender man or woman and a bushy bearded beatnik.
The caper ranked second in total loot value only to the 1945 theft in Bavaria of $9.8 million in Nazi Germany gold reserves. It also overshadowed Britain's $7.3 million great train robbery of 1663.
The daring theft of the three Rembrandts, three Rubens, one Elsheimer and one Dou ranks as history's second greatest robbery.
Scotland Yard later today revealed that only three of the paintings were found Monday.
ation can service students even faster.
And it's that speed, either on full automatic or with a human coin-taker, plus the long operating hours, that will insure the operation's ultimate success.
Robert Robinson, associate director of the Computer Center, said about 15 people are being trained on the machine, much more complex than two smaller computers which were kept running 24 hours a day to handle the increased loads brought on by research projects at the University.
When the Kansas City hook-up is complete, researchers there will be able to feed data cards into a machine in Kansas City, have the information transmitted directly to the GE 625, and get an answer back within minutes on smaller projects. Larger projects might take longer, Robinson said.
Cairo paper links Britain with Faisal
CAIRO — (UPI) — The government-owned Cairo newspaper Al Ahram today accused Saudi Arabian King Faisal of "continuing collusion" with Britain. The accusation heightened a crisis gripping the Middle East that threatens to pit Arab against Arab in open conflict.
And while it's one of a kind and a pure test-case, there are already many inquiries from those across the nation and around the world. They'd like one in their hospital, or their school or their manufacturing plant.
The charge followed by a day the announcement from the extremist Cairo-based Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) that it planned to mount a wave of violence at the palace of Jordan's King Hussein and the homes of his cabinet ministers.
AL AHRAM, a favorite vehicle for U.A.R. attacks against Arab moderates, cited a letter allegedly written by British Foreign Secretary George Brown to Faisal.
They won't be getting one soon though. Like Burge says, if they had a million bucks, they couldn't buy baby. Baby isn't for sale.
But someday, and soon by standards even of the soaring 60's, they will be for sale.
It said the letter "proved full coordination between Faissal's and British imperialist plans in the Arabian Peninsula."
AND THEYLL be better than the model that stands humming quietly, in the Hawklet. And they'll be better because of it. It's three generations old and each generation's better than the one before, and already engineers are contemplating that fourth generation.
It'll come before baby's able to celebrate birthday number two.
Daily Kansan Wednesday, January 4, 1967
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