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A vending machine that serves up safety

MIT class creates bike helmet dispenser

By Eric Moskowitz

 |  Globe Staff  

  December 31, 2011

In the long and colorful history of vending, machines have dispensed cigarettes and chewing gum, ice cream and lottery tickets, sandwiches and iPods. But bike helmets? Enter MIT. Specifically, 12 undergraduates from Mechanical Engineering 2.009, a product-design class renowned on campus and in local engineering circles for creating smart, colorful prototypes from scratch in one semester. Working with the city of Boston, the MIT undegrads have added another chapter to the annals of the vending machine.

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