AMFare System - Automated Food Service (1964)

[@rpondyke2121]

In December of 1964 I was sent to Stamford Conn. to work in the AMfare lab. They were testing all of the machines for the Amfare system. AMF was trying to find a sequel to their success with their bowling pin setting equipment, and they put their bet on the fast food business. Which was a pretty good bet, because that was the era of the birth of fast food. The research engineers in Greenwich developed the machines, and we spent months testing them 24 hours a day, five days a week. All the machines were run continuously making all the food items. The food was really good. The hamburgers were great. The patties were transported on an open steel belt as they passed through the gas burner that cooked them top and bottom. They had a great char-broiled flavor. But the Amfare system never got anywhere, because it took a crew many hours each day to clean the machines. A normal fast food chef will clean the grill after each burger is made. You can imagine how bad the hamburger machine got after running continuously for 12 to 16 hours every day.

[@tradinggraces4551]

My family moved to Wilton, Connecticut in 1961 so that my father, who was a mechanical engineer, could go to work for AMF in Stamford. He worked on the design of this project and I was invited to watch the engineers try to calibrate the primitive computers so that they could assemble a cheeseburger. The elements were placed in serial order on a conveyor belt: bun, burger, cheese, bun, but they never seemed able to get the registration alignment down. In the short while I watched, they wasted dozens and dozens of cheeseburgers, which simply fell off the end of the production belt into a big box. They were prevented by law from giving that food away... The prototype project then was called something like Festival Restaurants. It never got off the ground. Later on they tried developing lightweight bicycles, but they were too flexible and wobbly to make it to market. My father eventually moved to another engineering lab, Automation Engineering Laboratories (AEL), also located in Stamford. They contracted with Levi-Strauss to automate the sewing of zippers into jeans, but again I think the computer tech of the day was so primitive that getting the registration down became an insurmountable problem. A far cry from modern construction like this assembly line for Mercedes-Benz: kzbin.info/www/bejne/a6HRaaR3gLFjjJY

[@thinkbigreunion]

ORBIS = modern day Point of Sale system used in restaurants today

[@comeradecoyote]

I'm curious if you could get a 1080p or 4k scan of this done by one of these scanning houses. Would be interested to see a fully restored version of this film.

[@tomservo5007]

cleaning and sanitizing that machine each night must be a pain. Also, 400 burgers an hour is not a lot. 700 milkshakes in one hour is impressive ... they should of just scaled down the system to drinks only ... that's a pain to assemble in fast food places.