tion, a cursory inspection of this desk makes it clear that
it was created from a "yet to be finished" Mills Chicago
floor model slot machine. The drop front desk surface
was once intended as the lower panel to the slot below
the colorful counter wheel which was never mounted in
that location. Miss Columbia still stands proudly at the
center of this panel, but the edges are bull nosed with a
shaper where they would have joined the cabinet front,
and the mortise for the jackpot casting was obviously
never cut. In order to accommodate the desk front, the
cabinet sides have been carefully cut back to a slant
and reinforced with the styles of the same quarter sawn
white oak as the rest of the cabinet. Is it possible that
this creation was the inspiration for the design of the
slant front slot machines such as the Caille Venus, the
Victor Novelty, or the Schiemer-Yates that would make
an appearance in later years? Their similar appearance
seems almost too coincidental.
At the front of the desk, we see the window casting
for the coin escalator. The very top reveals the prelimi-
nary cut was made for the coin head, but there is noth-
ing in the way of an indentation in the wood to indicate
the cast iron head had ever been mounted. Six drawers
finish off the front of this desk. If you were creating
this desk from the Chicago slot production line, what
would you choose as an attractive drawer front? How
about using some of those floral carved panels normal-
ly used for the lower front of the slot machine and just
finish the exposed edges rather than burying them in
the framework of the cabinet? Whoever the mystery
designer was, he was successful in creating an attrac-
tive, yet practical, paperwork station all from an incom-
plete slot machine pulled from the Mills assembly line.
Maybe it was built with complete authorization from
the top, Herbert S. or Mortimer Mills. Or then again,
it is possible some enterprising young employee took it
upon himself to set aside a choice Chicago cabinet and
created it after closing time without the knowledge of
his superiors. Either way, it remains one of the great
Mills mysteries of the day.
The second mystery,
a set of arcade scales that
gave your weight for a
$5 gold piece, is pos-
sibly just as rare. This
beautiful set of scales
just might be the missing
link in the years between
Joseph Schermack's in-
vention of the first mass
mailing machine and
his eventual rise to be-
come the world's largest
manufacturer of coin-op
postage stamp vending
machines.
This mysterious coin-
op is a set of scales un-
like anything I have
ever encountered. The
front reads "National
Prosperity Corporation
Automatic
Banking
System." The entire upper head of the scales is an or-
nate casting of a building that looks very much like
the New York Stock Exchange building. The manufac-
turer is listed as Schermack Corporation, and the only
patent date is from 1922. The operation of the scales
seems fairly straightforward: Deposit a coin; read your
weight. Yet unlike any other drug store scales I have
seen, this set appears intended only for use in a bank
lobby. This is no penny scale. It requires the use of a
25-cent, SO-cent, 1-dollar silver, or 5-dollar gold coin.
Pretty pricey by arcade scale standards! Depositing a
coin produces not only a reading of your weight, but
it also vends a two-part deposit ticket from a roll as a
type of receipt. One half you would keep and stick in-
side your deposit booklet, and the other half you would
drop in the Deposit Slot in the cabinet for the bank's
record of your transaction.
Joseph J. Schermack is known in philatelists' circles
as the inventor of the first mass mailing machine. One
of Schermack's machine patented in 1906 could pro-
duce postage stamps separated from a perforated coil,
affix them to envelopes, and seal the envelopes at a rate
of 150 per minute. The only drawback to his machine
was that the Bureau of Engraving and Printing was
not producing coiled stamps at the time. The Bureau's
attempts at producing stamp coils had problems with
the stamps tearing or just plain falling apart due to the
perforations. Schermack started playing around with
perforating postage stamps to fit the machine, came up
with a few pretty good systems, and basically solved
the coiled stamp problem.
This brings us up to year 1909 when Schermack was
having disagreements with those in his company re-
7