Penny scales are also kind-of-common in Mexican pharmacies and superstores, including a third of the mexican Wal-Mart stores I've ever been. Some of them show your weight and lucky numbers (!) in a LED screen, but the more expansive ones print tickets with your weight, height, and blood pressure. Shout out to the last penny scale I used: It was located in a Farmacia del Ahorro (a mexican franchise chain of pharmacies), it had a beautiful circular screen with a ticket printer, and that electronic bastard ate my 5 pesos coin without even telling me how fat am I.

An old drug store had that same one when I was a kid. I was also fasicnated watching the owner open it to empty the coins and refill the cards. Many a quarter was eaten by that thing. At that time it felt like a great use of my allowance.

Sure you can. If the glass breaks it is too heavy.

He’s moved on from gaming videos, his primary focus is theme park history. I doubt he will do them again.

The first people that bought them in any quantity were the middle class, which was a growing group from the 1920s onward; yes, even in the 1930s there was a middle class that had a livable amount of money, though they had to be more thrifty than in the 20s. But they could have afforded a scale, since it was close to a lifetime purchase. At a guess, a bathroom scale in the 20s or 30s would have cost about 5 bucks. A middle class person probably made around 40 bucks a week back then. So it was a day or two's wages. Now this wasn't "easy money" you could throw away. Remember back then there was one "wage earner" or "bread winner" for a typical family of four, so that 40 bucks had to buy food, clothes, housing, and taxes for four people. But the definition of "middle class" is that you have some amount of disposable income that you can use as you please, even if it isn't much. So just like you and your family might be able to take a week or two of vacation every year, you could afford the occasional candy bar or a big purchase like a watch or a bathroom scale.

@@lwilton $5 is equal to 500 uses of the public scales is all im saying. if you wigh yourself once a week wich would be very often for the time period thats 10 years befor you even save 1cent. so i doubt anyone bought it thinking it would save them money. it was definitely very disposable income. an item you barly use at all is very different then a vacation.

@@theendofit You can buy a lot of bus rides for the price of a car. But when people could afford cars, they bought them and stopped riding buses. Convenience and (in those days) a sense of personal liberty to do what you wanted often trumped minimalist social economy. It is an attitude that is almost impossible to comprehend these days. The attitudes and aspirations of the people in the US before about 1965 were almost the complete polar opposite of what they are these days.