Imagine, if you will, you're looking for a modest distraction from your soul-sucking job.
So you head to the vending machine for a bag of chips and a Coke.
You're only soulless in the whole world. But the universe apparently hates you, and your perfectly adequate dollar bill
is rejected over and over again, even though you've tried smoothing it out
and flipping it over more times than the USB connector in the back of your freaking PC.
So how is it? We've mastered intercontinental flight, nuclear fission, a crown rack of lamb,
but a bill acceptor that always works still eludes our grasp.
I mean, the people that own vending machines presumably want the money,
so why don't they just take it? Just take it!
It turns out that bill acceptors have been around since the 1960s,
and their original design had issues that made them annoying to use for decades to come.
The main problem was that they used magnetic heads to scan a bill when it was inserted.
These were similar to what you'd find in old audio cassette players.
See, the ink they used to make paper money actually contains iron,
but it's not for nutritional value. It's so magnetic heads can detect ink patterns on a banknote to figure out how much it's worth,
and to confirm it is indeed money instead of some random piece of paper.
Problem is, with all the notes that go through an average vending machine,
those magnetic heads get dirty pretty fast. And it's not like there's always someone around to clean them off.
Making the problem worse was that older designs had to physically press the head against the bill,
so the machine was actually smearing dirt all over one of its most important parts.
Not to mention that squeezing the banknote that way made a paper jam more likely.
But current technology is better, so why are vending machines still so temperamental?
Although more recent magnetic bill acceptors use an improved reader that doesn't need to
physically touch that dollar bill that's been God knows where,
dirt still finds its way to other crucial components. The little wheels that grab and pull your bill through the slot can clog up and break,
and the optical sensors used by many newer vending machines to determine if the bill is
real or fake can get dirty as well. In effect, you can see for yourself by trying to use your phone's fingerprint reader
after making yourself a delicious PB&J.
Some vending machines can actually compensate for a dirty bill slot
by increasing the intensity of the light the optical sensors use,
and some of those can even do it automatically if it detects lots of buildup.
These advancements have made vending machines play more nicely with paper,
or polymer, depending on where you live, compared to a few decades ago,
but they're still obviously far from perfect. There are still enough delicate moving parts for things to go wrong.
Just ask anyone who's ever owned an ink-gent printer.
But even if the bill acceptor is super clean, the software still has to be configured properly.
Some of them can have their sensitivity adjusted depending on the time of day,
so it might be more likely to spit a bill back out at night
when people may be more likely to try and use a counterfeit.
Additionally, it needs to be updated whenever currency is redesigned,
and given how many vending machines just aren't serviced regularly enough,
it's not exactly surprising that rejected bills are still commonplace in the year of our Lord 2022.
Of course, most vending machines sell fairly trivial items like my favorite smoothie ingredients,
pork rinds, and Mountain Dew, so a crappy bill acceptor usually isn't the end of the world.
The models built into more sensitive applications like ATMs and casino cash validators
tend to be quite robust and serviced more frequently,
so they're typically a lot less frustrating to use. You know, we could avoid so much of this if we just used $1 coins instead.
God bless Canada. And bless you for watching this video.
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