versions of the popular Owl, Fox, Lion, Star, and Judge
(1900-1902, of which only one example made by Berg-
er is known). Paul Berger brought out his American
Beauty slot in 1901 and an unusually named Oom-Paul
(1901-1903) that has the distinction of being one of the
tallest floor model slot machines ever produced. The
Oom-Paul was named for Paul Kruger (1825-1904),
one of the fathers of the South African Republic and
swashbuckling figure of the Boer Wars. Oom-Paul is
derived from the Dutch word for Uncle but in popular
parlance of the day it had become slang for "daring-
do." It is said that Paul Berger named the machine for
this daring-do combined with his own first name. The
Berger company also brought out their own version of
the very popular 'Dewey' upright slot (1901-1904), but
as Bueschel put it, it was the "worst looking Dewey of
them all." The Berger Company was sufficiently suc-
cessful that the Sapho Manufacturing Company, also
from Chicago, licensed it to produce the Sapho floor
peep show. (Sapho also licensed this machine to Mills,
RJ White, and others at about the same time.)
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appears to be the later National Vender, made in 1907,
that is often found selling Colgan's Taffy Tolu gum
or Wilbur's Chocolates. The connection between this
patent and the subsequent manufacture of the machine
by another company remains unknown, but suggests a
need to sell or license the patent to raise cash.
With so many products in a popular field, what hap-
pened to spell the doom of the Berger Company? Elec-
trically operated slot machines of this era used power
from a dry-cell battery to detect a winning combination
and effect a payout. While this sounds like prescient
technology - one that would not make its reappearance
for many decades - it was sadly before its time. The
contacts of these machines became dirty and unreliable,
batteries had to be replaced often, and the player would
only receive their winnings if they remembered to hold
down the activating lever while the machine completed
its cycle. These were all major drawbacks that had to
be put up with, but when fully mechanical slots made
their appearance, the electric slot machines faded as
fast as they had risen to popularity.
Another key to the demise of this company may
have been the success of the young Mills Novelty
Company. In 1897, Herbert S. Mills bought out his
father 's M.B.M. Cigar Vending Machine Company and
began selling slot machines, using the relatively new
medium of printed catalogs. What worked for Sears,
Roebuck and Co., worked for Mills and the combi-
nation of widespread advertising and a mechanically
superior product put pressure on most of the compel -
ing producers of early slot machines. By 1902, the
production of electric slot machines effectively ended
because of this pressure. To further this leadership, in
1907, Charles Fey teamed up with the Mills Novelty
Company to manufacture the Mills Liberty Bell. The
Liberty Bell featured a cast iron case, with a Liberty
Bell cast into the front of the machine. The machine
originally had cast iron feet with toes, but in later mod-
els the toes were eliminated and replaced with simpler
ornate scrolled feet. The machine's reel strips depicted
playing cards (the king, queen, and jack) and it had a
bell that rang with a winning combination. The ringing
bell was quickly dropped, but the original concept was
not lost - modern slot machines use a bell that signals
a jackpot. In 1910, the Mills Novelty Company intro-
duced a slight variation to the Liberty Bell and called it
the Operator Bell because it was more available to the
operators than competing machines. This machine had
a gooseneck coin entry and featured the now famous
fruit symbols, which are still used today. It is estimated
_, _,
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Paul Berger was himself an inventor. In 1898, he ob-
tained a patent for a coin acceptor (No. 612656, October
18, 1989, Figure 1) and in 1901 , was granted a patent
(No. 676,114, June 11, 1901, Figure 2) for a slug ejec-
tor/ coin head for slot machines that eventually found
use on some of his later models. While it appears that
this later coin head was an improvement over what was
available, it was inexplicably not added to Berger's ma-
chines until several years later when a competing coin
head system that did not require the user to turn a crank
had already made its appearance on other machines.
We don ' t know if this failure to take advantage of a
new technology was because of financial problems the
company was experiencing, or if this failure to respond
to rapidly changing issues in the marketplace resulted
in the company 's hard times. Berger also patented a
match or gum vender (No. 822,909, June 12, 1906) that
13