Automatic Hamburger Machine - 50 Years Ahead of Its Time!

[@rpondyke2121]

In December 1965 I worked for AMF, and was transferred to Stamford Conn to work in the AMFARE test lab. It was setup like a fast food kitchen with all the machines there making everything described in the video. I worked graveyard, as they ran 24 hours five days a week. We ran the machines and made the food, and each day we filled the dumpster out back. All of it was thrown away. But the stuff was great. The double cheeseburgers were excellent, with a terrific charbroiled flavor. Had too many milk shakes. The machines worked great. They were designed by the research engineers in Greenwich that were looking for another hit like the bowling machines. On the weekends I rescued and took home bags of fried shrimp and put them in my mother's freezer. AMFARE was doomed from the start. It took hours to clean the machines. Cooked on grease from machines running for endless hours could only be removed using super strong alkali chemicals. It was a nightmare. But the machines were beautiful!

[@rpondyke2121]

+R Pondyke Actually, it was December 1964.

[@user-lf8ys7ow3u]

+R Pondyke Very interesting.

[@mofo78536]

+R Pondyke Wonder what it would be like with technology these days. Hopefully more progress with self maintaining industrial processes.

[@rpondyke2121]

+mofo syne The cleaning issue is always going to be a problem. I don't know how anyone can get around that. However, as I had mentioned, the quality of the cooked hamburger patty was really good. Cooking it in an open flame on both sides at a time gave it a terrific flavor. I don't think any fast food joint does that today.

[@thyloanwalfe666]

+R Pondyke Dairy Queen here Canada cooks their burgers on a flame broil conveyor belt oven

[@HiveQu33n]

Is anyone else on a retro-futurism KZbin spree? Where did society go so wrong that we don't have all this cool stuff as a standard today?

[@Atomwaffen-y3s]

Something called "The Seventies" happened.

[@StuntDonk]

Skynet the Terminator turned people off I guess

[@foxsux6000]

these machines didn't take off due to the fact it cost about $100,000 a year just to operate and was a disaster to clean. the modern form will take off, because they can now run them for a fraction and are easier to clean than a regular grill... in 5 years nobody will be flipping burgers anymore ;)

[@jeanrenetournecuillert2449]

Im 5 years on to the future and you're wrong will take more time ^^

[@mattniper7590]

Give it 5 more

[@Calvhinnn]

hmmm

[@6t76t]

It's been almost 10 years, and we still have people flipping burgers as their jobs

[@BargSlarg]

Ouch, on this prediction 9 years ago.

[@rpondyke2121]

Years ago I noticed that Burger King used a broiler similar to the one in the hamburger machine. It consisted of a conveyor of three steel bands which carried the burger patty thru the flame broiler. The flames hit both sides of the patty at once. Cooking it that way gives it a terrific char-broiled flavor. AMF used meat that was about 20% fat content. It is the burning of the fat that gives it the flavor. I have wondered if the Burger King broiler was a descendant of the original hamburger machine.

[@kaiserkoko8734]

BK always tastes like it was cooked in a microwave

[@Bruceillest101]

@@kaiserkoko8734 bc they reheat the burger in the microwave

[@catchfish2057]

Burger King stopped using the broiler when they set a UK airport on fire

[@jerichothedrifter60]

Lots of servos, solenoids and pneumatic systems that had to be a nightmare to maintain. Surfaces that had to be near impossible to clean and keep clean and sanitary. An enormous investment right on the front end, for a system that was never scaled and brought to market phase. Not surprising this didn't take off. It's more like the pipe dream of a bunch of engineers, rather than a workable setup.

[@Xenomorph1111]

a good guess is that is part of why it never took hold in many restaurants..I agree it was not only a nightmare to maintain ... I bet if it broke down, the restaurant would have had to close down until repairs were made ( unless they had a way to manually fix the meals correctly & timely

[@StuntDonk]

It all begins with a first step

[@jerichothedrifter60]

@@Xenomorph1111 seems like you'd have to have a maintenance engineer on site at all times to keep it running

[@electroshed]

BigClive also sent me here... It would probably take as many people to clean all of this equipment as it would to just cook/prep the food by hand! Given the labour kind used in fast food outlets, I could easily imagine equipment not being cleaned correctly.

[@thesteelrodent1796]

most impressive is that this worked mostly on simple electro-mechanical counters, limit switches, and analogue mechanical contraptions. Very little of the control was actually done by the "electronic wizard"

[@z-beeblebrox]

Interesting that a lot of the most beneficial aspects of this AMF machine have been utilized piecemeal by modern fast food places.

[@johnb2890]

I actually worked in the prototype restaurant in 1963 in New York. Where I met Walt Disney who was considering the purchase of the machines. The problem was reliability. It was before its time but had potential. I worked with the chef pictured in the video.

[@ferros8215]

Human "What is my purpose?" AMFare "You maintain me." Human "Oh my god."

[@0ctothorp]

While I can appreciate that running this machine was probably cheaper than hiring people to do all this stuff I'm pretty sure any savings you'd get through running it would be sucked away the second you had to do maintenance on it. Also cleaning it looks like a nightmare of pinched fingers waiting to happen. Also the cost of the machine itself probably would never pay itself off outside of novelty value and you'd probably get flak from people whose job this machine takes. However the ordering system is primitive but remarkably similar to how fast food cash registers operate today, I would definitely say that's well ahead of it's time.

[@StuntDonk]

Like my K-car

[@SeverEnergia]

Does anyone know where I could read more about automated restaurant experiments? Mark R. suggests theres stuff out there...

[@SeverEnergia]

love running into myself almost a decade later - I found a article on scihub :D

[@BigDogCountry]

Does it leak oil on the garage floor?

[@dannydaw59]

ROFL

[@monkeysockseaturface]

it takes whole 4 minutes to produce an order and is still required to be managed by two workers additionally it would be costly to build a AMF system and maintain it. minimum wage workers will continue to dominate the fast food industry for the foreseeable future.

[@NoirpoolSea]

Not true. It takes 4 minutes to output a given order. They did not state what it's throughout was. It's called queue theory. You have a number of orders in the pipeline simultaneously at various stages of completion. That's how factories work. This can be understood better in an auto factory. You may have a new car poopping off the end every 5 minutes, even though a particular car might take 5 hours from start to finish.

[@cobaltclass.]

Actually the cost of the new version of the machine will pay for itself in about 1 year. The total size of the unit will be about 24 square feet cutting the total size of the restaurant down or allowing more seating space. The machines today can produce about 360 burgers an hour and you can customize all the toppings and even the meat blend of the burger itself. The system is far more sanitary than the average fast food restaurant. With these savings you can increase the quality of the ingredients and sell 'gourmet' burgers for McDonalds prices and make even more money. You forget you buy the machine once while you pay the wage of the worker every year. Plus you don't have to worry about worker injuries, surly employees demanding college level wages for no skill work, employees who don't come to work, etc. Plus they already have an automated cashier/order taker. So really you just need a couple workers whom you can pay 15/hr so they'll restock your fast food machine and smile at customers. Gone will be all the rest of the crew.

[@greggeshelman]

Two or three people trained to handle any issues with the equipment and handle deliveries and restocking the consumables, one per shift. If the serving trays are delivered on conveyors to the customers, and returned the same way to automatic washing, that's all the employees a restaurant would need. There already are restaurants like that in Japan. At least one even has an animatronic robot doing the cooking inside a clear walled box. The food is sent down the line and pushed through trapdoors onto the tables, with all the robotic stuff inside the clear walls for the customers to see. When it comes to American shores it's likely that all the showy stuff won't come with it. There'll just be order screens at each table. Poke your debit card in and wait for the food.

[@georgedeponte9652]

They finally learned their money was in bowling pinsetters and equipment... As well as learning they couldn't build a better motorcycle either...*S

[@phonotical]

I bet they made no more than 20 of those machines

[@Willem654]

1964: Burger machine, Now: Spongebob

[@chatboss000]

Man, this looks cool. But cleaning needs to be a design focus for anything that goes through a lot of food, and this doesn't look like it has any capabilities to self-clean whatsoever.

[@hedvaniobezerra]

"...Fresh ground beef" and then we see a machine cutting a pice of what it looks like to be cardboard. Laughs.

[@kevinlau6372]

So why didn't all fast food chains use this already?

[@StuntDonk]

Globalist conspiracy to bring labors from countries we have not even heard of and have yet not discovered the wheel

[@Emonga093]

Automation is insanity in a market economy. Automation is sanity in a resource based economy.

[@ziad_jkhan]

thechoiceisours dot com

[@allandulles7108]

I'm too low iq to understand what this means. Someone explain

[@louislamonte334]

It's odd that this technology wasn't further developed at the time nor subsequently. McDonald's has already installed(early 2023)a completely computerized ordering system. The fast food industry has had numerous labor problems and bad publicity in the last decade and what better way to eliminate both than fully automate? I predict that by decades end most fast food restaurants, the big chains, will be fully automated.

[@RobertsonBrendyn]

This is a brilliant idea, but it was scrapped cause it takes forever to clean and cost over $100,000 just to operate it. Not to mention that it keeps breaking down. Even with a full-time technician.

[@mofo78536]

+Brendyn Robertson Hopefully technology has improved since then. Maybe it's more practical now? Or at the very least the ordering and picking up bits.

[@RobertsonBrendyn]

Maybe, maybe not.

[@splunkett50]

+Brendyn Robertson My dad was a customer rep for AMF in Mill Valley CA and a local chain (think A&W?) tried these out. I remember getting dragged into the place on a weekend when engineers were trying to debug the installation before the restaurant opened. We watched food coming off the conveyer belt all morning going straight into a big trashcan. The owner cancelled the contract eventually since the system did indeed break down daily.

[@aidabach]

+Brendyn Robertson Thank you. I think so too.

[@TonyAna.]

thanks for that, i was wondering what happened since this was like the future back int eh 50s right?.. so we got momentummachines.com/ now with a much simplier machine to do the burgers, looks like less moving parts to jam up, im guessing. haven't seen it run . yet ( the only think I can remember AMF for is their bowling alleys back in aust )

[@jakeman3755]

Is there an app for that?

[@angeladay1534]

Food was fresh! 😘

[@randywhitley996]

Oh sure, AMF did a great job with Harley Davidson and Brunswick.

[@The13thGuest]

I am pretty sure if they took another crack at it,It might more applicable in todays market

[@inboxnews]

Say goodbye to $15/hr. Buh bye!

[@mofo78536]

+inboxnews completely missing the point of why we automate.

[@inboxnews]

+mofo syne I doubt it. We automate to be more productive. That is the reason.

[@mofo78536]

+inboxnews then that means you are in support of a minimum wage at the very least. without it, there is reduced incentive to automate, and more incentive to basically apply coercion on workers for even lower pay.

[@inboxnews]

+mofo syne "Coercion on workers"? Um, no. Nobody is forcing anyone to work. We don't have slavery in this country. Furthermore, less than 1% of all workers receive the minimum wage. This issue, created by The Left, is a big nothing burger.

[@mofo78536]

+inboxnews this is not a left or right thing. This is about the nature of work and if we can engineer a society where people can focus more on the things that matter, like science, arts, engineering, and social interactions (As opposed to being stuck in manual labour. We have done this for farming, we can do this for fast food, and eventually all menial jobs.). Maybe have a read of the conversation with "Frederick Wohosky" comment to get a better picture.

[@MrNeptunebob]

I just read about and seen this and if I owned a bowling alley, I would want one for the snack bar! Maybe the use of frozen patties as burger king does not would make it a lot easier to clean and make it less complex. I see a food safety issue with having 80 pounds of fresh meat on board.

[@briansokoloski776]

Robert Connor must be a refrigerated storage area for fresh meat awaiting patty formation

[@BulletSpoung]

I'm hoping for a 100% automated fast food restaurant. The only people in the place are framed and hanging on the wall. No crack heads, Ex-cons, felons or adults near my food.

[@tanaminogarashi]

Is this the channel for Bistrobot?

[@joebonsaipoland]

Did GM buy AMF?

[@joebonsaipoland]

What ever happened to this company? And it's product?

[@phonotical]

@bigclivedotcom bought me here

[@IndigoXYZ18]

Atompunk AF.

[@s.c.7362]

....to golden, hot Christmas???

[@chatboss000]

Jonsa Lyn *Crispness

[@lonestar1775]

BigClive sent me here.

[@garrikcook5940]

Imagine the efficiency of today's automation. Ok now try to think of a wage that would compete against today's automation as far as, speed, quality, and efficiency. Also remember that it could just take one maintenance person to upkeep the automation process.

[@garrikcook5940]

Any ideas?

[@davidtangen8189]

I wonder how they would clean that

[@nicholaslandolina]

Gebius

[@The13thGuest]

American Technology

[@MegaMackproductions]

so much freedom, it clogs your arteries.

[@CalculusVariations99]

dat hat

[@longgenes2250]

Resourced based economy would be better... We need to automate these stupid jobs like McDonald's and start living free! Nobody wants to be a burger flipper! Please watch the Zeitgeist movement.

[@Hopeforthisheart]

Justin The Mix Being a burger flipper is sure better than starving to death, no?

[@longgenes2250]

Watch the zeitgeist addendum on KZbin to understand what I'm saying.

[@mofo78536]

+MadameCheshire Then the question is why is that the case that our current system enforce this dichotomy? Especially considering that many food is essentially thrown away simply because nobody is buying it?

[@tmastersat]

Only the low labor cost stoped this. Unions never learn they lost all the factory jobs now they are killing the service industry

[@nikosv8166]

its funny man still cannot go back to the moon

[@Weatherman66]

I'm sure an updated system such as this will take care of those $15 jobs quick, fast, and in a hurry.

[@mofo78536]

And maybe that would be a good thing. Why pay people to starve?

[@gavinothegreat5765]

what $15 jobs?

[@Weatherman66]

Minimum wage for food service workers pushing $15 an hour. www.google.com/search?q=%2415+hour+in+California&rlz=1C1FDUM_enUS473US473&oq=%2415+hour+in+California&aqs=chrome..69i57.14550j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8

[@mofo78536]

+Frederick Wohosky so? People should not be working in fast food if we have the technology to make it irrelevant.

[@mofo78536]

+J Thorn fortunately your ideal may come into fruition, with the current experimental research on the basic income concept. At the moment there are people who are relying on these just to even maintain basic living standard, and this desperation is pushing wage artificially way below minimum viable income for individuals. Basically oversupply of labour vs job position. If this research works, and can be scaled to a wider audience. Then a more independent and sustainable society that is suitable for libertarians, socialist, and also is able to adapt to an automated society will be possible.

[@whereareyou222]

Food poisoning was probably why this was scrapped, because at the end of the day it was impossible to clean all the grease, bread crumbs, grills, transfers, dropped food, etc. What a JOKE!

[@timothymathesii5838]

Madd Maxx Do you think it would work in current day if we made a machine like that to clean itself also? Or are you just commenting on the past version? Sorry im just curious whats the joke?

[@altoidgod]

.

[@gavinothegreat5765]

if we could lower regulations and restrictions and lower subjective lawsuits by scumbag law system then automation would come naturally from unregulated capitalism

[@mofo78536]

+gavino thegreat if I recall correctly from economics classes, it really depends on the elasticity of the market, and if the market breeds natural monopolies. It's not exactly a one sized fits all thing.

[@TezukaKohei]

WHY DO THESE HEIFERS STILL HAVE JOBS AT MCDONALDS

[@richardhoover4164]

Pure BS! They only made one of the things. Never got into general use, I know, I was there. The wage for me then was .65 and hour, and I was paid better than most.A few years later MCD was everywhere & sold a burger for .15, fries for .10, coke .10, milkshake for .20, cheeseburger .20. How could anyone afford this trash? Yes, AMF made their money in pin setter because every bowling ally in the country had just converted. The same year 1959 AMF bought Harley and tried their best to destroy that company for 12 years too.

[@greggeshelman]

The one in this video was at Jay’s Drive-in Restaurant in Brooklyn Center, a suburb of Minneapolis, MN. Another was at Fiesta Drive-In in Levittown, Long Island. I found some reference to a third one but no specific location.

[@staceygal1984]

I think its messed up this will take away jobs from people it is soo wrong

[@foxsux6000]

It's messed up you want people doing shitty jobs they hate and you end up with a spit and poop burger thanks to your awesome attitude of pretending you're their boss...

[@sextwister]

staceygal1984 I would LOVE for a machine like this to take my job. Because that means that millions of people from other industries will lose their jobs too. Then we can all work together to take back what we built.

[@foxsux6000]

Igit Igit It won't destroy a single job, you know why, people will need to maintain it, fewer people, but the jobs will get displaced by others. did the computer make the office paperless? did the computer create less work? It's a matter of big fat nope.

[@sextwister]

yeah, well thats because AI is still in its infancy. And global unemployment is really high right now, largely due to increased productivity due to technology.

[@foxsux6000]

Igit Igit Global unemployment is actually very low, there almost isn't a country which reaches over 10%, and 15% is still financially safe for most countries (to even 25% is still safe for some) There are in many places now more jobs than there are qualified people to fill them, and this is also because technology has created a vast number of new jobs.