The coin counting machine

Coins enter through a wide funnel in a rush, all denominations together, and emerge sorted into six trays without a single misstep, each coin routed by a wheel that reads its diameter the way a locksmith reads a pin tumbler, more by feel than by sight. The sound is the whole performance for anyone standing nearby: a continuous clatter that rises and falls as the hopper empties, occasionally interrupted by the flatter clank of a coin too worn or too foreign to sort, kicked into a reject slot to be handled by a person instead. The rhythm holds steady through most of a roll's worth of coins, then stutters near the bottom of the hopper as fewer coins remain to keep each other company on the way down, the gaps between clatters growing wider until the last few arrive one at a time, almost apologetic. A total prints at the end, rounded to the cent, with a count broken out by denomination that almost nobody reads before folding it into a deposit bag. The machine holds no opinion about the money passing through it, no sense of a roll of quarters becoming rent, becoming payroll, becoming whatever a bank does with coins overnight. It only sorts, and sorts well, until the hopper runs empty and the room goes quiet again.

Sig. Lundqvist