Horn and Hardart began operating self-service restaurants in the 1910s, with food behind small glass doors which were opened by inserting a coin (initially a nickel) into a slot. By the 1930s, such automats (restaurants without waiters) served a full range of lunch and dinner entrées; in the 1940s, more than fifty serviced New York City, NY alone. In their heyday through the 1960s, automats provided inexpensive food in vast simple rooms that allowed customers to linger at tables—and fascinated tourists and children. Outpaced by fastfood restaurants, however, the last New York automat closed in 1991.