Recently, I visited the Irish Whiskey Museum on College Green. Irish whiskey has a long (and sometimes dangerous!) history, and the story is well told in the Museum. One of the things that really caught my attention wasn’t from the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries but much more recent. Introducing, the Jameson ‘Nightender’:
The Jameson ‘Nightender’ in the Irish Whiskey Museum. With thanks to the excellent Potstilled blog for the image.
A clever invention of the 1970s, the ‘Nightender’ was only ever two ten pence coins away from giving you a drink, even after the (human) bartender had decided it was time to close up. Unsurprisingly, the authorities took a dim view of the machines, and they were quickly outlawed. A few seem to have popped up internationally, such as in McKinney, Texas.
Around the same time as the ‘Nightender’, the Sunday Independent reported in 1974 that the Sandyford House had installed “a drinking man’s dream”, with machines on the premises where you “insert your money and out splashes a vodka, gin or whiskey.” The Irish Barmen’s Union weren’t keen on the machines, arguing that:
This machine can break down. You cannot talk to it over a drink….People prefer to sit and be served, especially if they are not too steady on their feet…barmen would fight any moves to introduce the do-it-yourself machines into union pubs.
The Sandyford House, 1974 (Sunday Independent)
