London Transport and its predecessors have long realized that self service ticket issuing was an essential adjunct to the traditional purchase of tickets from ticket offices.
With the arrival of the Underground's Victoria Line in the 1960s it was thought that further automation was necessary to avoid the need for huge numbers of additional staff. This led to the proposal to automate ticket inspection as well as the ticket issuing process.
This publication tells the story of all this from the earliest day until AFC - the automated ticket checking regime - was scaled down in the late 1970s. In due course the story of automatic ticket issuing and ticket examination on the London Underground will be brought completely up to date.
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