The Archaeology of the Fruit Machine
In 1893 the Griswold Manufacturing Company of
Rock Island, Illinois, began to manufacture a
machine appropriately named as the Wheel of
Fortune. This consisted of a vertically disposed
dial, numbered at the edges like a roulette wheel.
Insertion of a nickel enabled the player to spin the
dial by means of the handle at the front of the
machine. If certain numbers on the dial stopped
opposite a pointer the player was entitled to a
house-paid award ranging in value from two to ten
cigars.
Two years later, a brief business associate of
Charles Fey, named Gustav F. W. Schultze,
improved this type of machine still further by
incorporating an automatic payout of his own
design which was capable of paying out either two
coins or a token of higher value depending upon
the position of the dial. Within a year the firm of
D. N. Schall of Chicago began production of
counter Pin Wheel machines based upon the
Schultze design, very soon becoming the largest
manufacturers of this type of macl;line in the
United States. From this time on the payout
mechanism became increasingly sophisticated so
that by the turn of the century de-luxe floor
machines were being made by a number of
manufacturers which in some instances were
capable of holding up to 2,000 trade checks, or
paying out automatically, on a dollar play
machine, as much as $40 in cash.
Payout system
The development of a reliable fully automatic
payout system was of importance in that it greatly
enhanced a machine's play appeal and
consequently its profitability. Although an
automatic payout system was never used on the
five-reelers, it was, however, rapidly incorporated
into a new type of reel play machine which came
into existence at this time, the one-reeler. This
type of machine as its name suggests consisted of a
single vertically disposed reel. In June 1897,
William Wrigley, Jnr. and Company of
Chicago-of chewing gum fame-were granted
the first United States patent for a one reel
machine. Like the earlier 'card' machines it had
no automatic payout, but unlike them, it was
essentially based upon the Pin Wheel machines, in
that the reel was subdivided into numbered spaces.
House paid awards were given by the location
owner depending upon which number came to rest
opposite the pointer. It was marketed as the Try
Your Luck, and was made by the company in
order to stimulate sales. As a consequence it was
given away free to shopkeepers and merchants
who had purchased a specified quantity of gum.
Operation of the machine by the player entitled
him to a minimum of le worth of gum for his le
stake, however if he was lucky, and the right
number came up, he became entitled to an extra
amount free.
Major innovation
By 1904 the one reeler was being made specifically
as a gambling machine, incorporating innovations
applied at an earlier date on the Pin Wheel
machines. In that year the firm of Paupa and
Hochriem, of Chicago, were granted a patent for
the Elk, which because of its ready success was
soon being copied by other American
manufacturers. Instead of the numbers on the Try
Your Luck, the reel of the Elk was bedecked with
symbols such as stars and horseshoes, as well as
card oriented ones derived from the five-reelers.
The major innovative feature of the machine was
its use of automatic payout. It was also made with
five separate coin slots, each slot relating to a
different symbol, so that a player could effectively
bet upon whichever symbol he thought would
appear on the payline. The use of a multiple coin
slot was a major innovation which had been in use
upon the Pin Wheel machines since 1896. Multiple
coin slots proved to be so popular that the single
coin slot on this type of machine became virtually
extinct. Although the multiple coin slot was
initially introduced in a bid to enable more than
one player to use a machine at the same time, thus
increasing revenue, it soon became clear that its
popularity lay not in this, but because it seemed to
give the player a better chance of winning, in that
he could now choose which symbols he bet on,
and as a consequence was encouraged to increase
his stake by betting on more than one symbol at a
time.
In the same year that Paupa and Hochriem
patented the Elk, the Puritan Machine Company
Ltd. of Detroit, Michigan, began manufacturing
the Puritan. The distinguishing feature of this
successful machine was its use of three reels,
which predates the Fey machine by a full year. In a
developmental sense both the Puritan and the Fey
machines were following a precedent set as early
as 1897 by the Cowper Manufacturing Company
of Chicago, Illinois, of a tripartite system, with
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~»
XIII