This Vending Machine Prints Short Stories For French Commuters #MakerEducation
The debate in literary and publishing circles alike about whether or not short stories are a dying art form has been going on for so long it almost makes you wonder if there’s anything new to say.
Notice how I said almost? Enter The Short Stories Distributor machine.
This new piece of technology developed by the French site Short Edition, takes the short story, a form which was popularized way back in the late 19th Century, and delivers it to the modern French commuter.
“We thought it might be fun to have a distributor of stories in the same way as a vending machine,” said Short Edition director Christophe Sibieude at the launch of the first terminal in October. “The paper gives a real breath, it is much more unexpected than a smartphone.” [statement machine-translated from French]
Maybe the most famous buyer of the machine is Francis Ford Coppola. The movie maker had one delivered to him in San Francisco, where he installed it in his Cafe Zoetrope restaurant. Coppola likes short stories, he says, because you read them in one sitting, like a movie. But the majority of the Short Stories Distributors are in France. The 24 units already installed in railways stations will soon be joined by 11 more, and in France as a whole, over 70 have been put to work.
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Each Tuesday is EducationTuesday here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts about educators and all things STEM. Adafruit supports our educators and loves to spread the good word about educational STEM innovations!