Penny Arcades and the Uncle Sam Strength Tester
It was a natural for early coin-op machine makers to embody the iconic caricature of Uncle Sam in the
form of an entertainment machine designed to attract patronage - especially a coin-operated machine.
The ideal locations for coin-op machines were saloons, resort areas and then the onslaught of the
"penny arcades" popularized in the very early 1900's. Herbert Mills of Chicago's Mills Novelty Company,
writes about the Automatic Vaudeville or Penny Arcade business in the early 20th century:
''The Penny Arcade has become a permanent institution as much as the theater, the opera, the
circus, the concert, the lecture or the gymnasium, for it combines in a modified form of all of
these and because it makes such universal appeal, particularly to the poorer classes, it is
destined to grow constantly in popularity and size. Only about 10 per cent of the total population
has an income of more than $1,200.00 per year, and therefore, the percentage of those who can
afford a dollar for a concert ticket or two dollars for a theater ticket is very small. But everyone
can patronize the Penny Vaudeville and afford ten cents for half an hour's entertainment."
Lifting Machines, Punching Machines and Grip Testers
Athletic test machines were really the first arcade games. In the 1880s, various strength testers began to
appear in bars and taverns. In 1885 Robert W. Page of London, England had a coin-op "Hand Shake"
machine in the market with a U.S. patent issuance (#373,942) in late 1887. By measuring a force applied
to a spring or counter-weight, they were similar to weighing scales, although not required to be
accurate. They came in many shapes and sizes and were very popular in the hard living, working class
culture of the industrial age. An alternative to arm wrestling, they could be used to settle wagers or
impress the opposite sex with demonstrations of physical prowess.
Uncle Sam "Grip Machine" - A Classic
The earliest version of an Uncle Sam grip machine was created by the Howard Company in 1904.
Howard had plenty of Uncle Sam images to choose from
in creating its machine . Since there is a stand present
instead of a lower torso, a red and white striped jacket
with blue lapels were used instead of an all blue jacket -
undoubtedly to capture the red, white and blue concept
of the full image as shown in the cartoons. The Howard
figure shows a more youthful Uncle Sam (darker instead
of white hair) and what its flyer called : "a jovial smile on
his face" rather than the stern face that would later
become the standard after 1916.
Fig. 3: Howard Uncle Sam at auction in 2006.
"66 inches tall, scale and face are all
original, some minor paint restoration on
upper torso"
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