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Coin Slot

Issue: 1977 June 029

Coin Slot Magazine - #029 - 1977 - June [International Arcade Museum]
WHERE HAVE JILL
THE FLOWERS 60NE?
By Dick Bueschel
When the Sheriffs Office instructed the Louisville, Kentucky, police
to line up all the slots on the courthouse steps after a crackdown
over half-a-century ago the thought was to create a photograph
that would serve as a warning to illegal slot machine operators that
the free-and-easy days of the past were all over. Maybe it worked,
but the long-term results are far different. No longer a warning,
today it's a treasure. The picture survived long after the salad days
of the machines it illustrates, giving us an insight into what slot
operating must have been like in the early twenties.
A lot has been written about the popularity and the then rapid
demise of the automatic color wheel floor machines of the late
1890s and early 1900s, with the suggestion made that they dis
appeared like dinosaurs as soon as the three-reelers showed up.
Equally, cabinet gum venders reportedly went the same way when
the Bell side venders took over, with counter games a rarity until
the 1930s. Yet here they all are, side-by-side, sitting and standing
in the sun together just as if they wanted to tell us how wrong we
could be when we try to make judgements long after the fact.
It's like finding the bones of Pithecanthropus, Homo Sapiens
and Neanderthal Man around the same prehistoric campfire site
proving they swapped stories about the same hunt.
This picture was hidden almost as deep as an ancient campfire,
for it lay all but forgotten in the vaults of the Photographic
Archives of the University of Louisville until author Michael Lesy
included it in his marvelously nostalgic book REAL LIFE.
.com
m
u
e
Louis
ville in the Twenties published by Pantheon Books in 1976.
It
ran there, uncaptioned and unidentified,
A follow-up to the
m: us
o
r
f
archivist led to an d
original
ed print. -m
oa .arcade
l
n
ow the
Feast your D eyes on
www hardware. Oh, what a collection this would
/
/
:
p
tt is 1923 or earlier; more likely 1921 or 1922. It
make. The h date
can be dated because all of the side venders are for gum and there
are no F.O.K. machines.
It was in the spring of 1923 that O.D.
© The International Arcade Museum
http://www.arcade-museum.com/
Coin Slot Magazine - #029 - 1977 - June [International Arcade Museum]
Jennings introduced mints as a better vending product, with Mills
introducing its front vender F.O.K. later that summer.
Both new
ideas took the country by storm as they met the problems of local
laws far better than the earlier quickly-emptied side venders.
The three-reel Bell machines in the picture are interesting enough;
a total of thirty-six Mills OPERATOR BELL, SI LVENT SALESMEN
COUNTER O.K. and Jennings OPERATORS BELL machines taking
center
stage, including the skinny gooseneck of a 1914 Mills
"Iron Case" clawfoot OPERATOR BELL at the right end of the
second row from the top. If anything, the picture shows the deep
penetration
machine
The
that
Jennings
markets soon
really
exciting
had
made
after the end
machines
are
into
the
traditional
Mills
of WWI.
the
ones
on
the
periphery.
Squatting unceremoniously in the front row, fourth from the left,
is a 5-way counter wheel identified as THE/PRINCE with a
jeweled crown device in the center of the disc.
It could be a
Watling machine - Watling started making CROWN PRINCE in
1902 right after buying out the D.N. Schall & Company - but
more likely it was made by somebody else. There's a reason for
this assumption which we'll get to.
At the far left is a beauty; THE STAR, first made by The Automatic
Machine & Tool Company in Chicago in 1899, and quickly copied
by Schall, Watling, Berger, White and others.
The Automatic
Machine & Tool Company STAR had a crank-type coin head.
This one doesn't.
Therefore, it's one of the copied machines.
The head looks Watling.
But I say it's another manufacturer.
We'll get to that.
At the upper left is an uncatalogued machine; a The Caille Brothers
Company FLOOR LIBERTY BELL DELUXE, with the casting
on the front saying "Package Liberty Fruit Gum 5cent" and a
gilded "Gum/Vender" on the cabinet glass. This is a machine from
1911, apparently still paying its way a decade later.
At the right end of the second, third and fourth rows are a bunch of
com
.
m
:
These are the cast metal o cabinet
seu first introduced in 1918,
u models
fr m nationally-used
m
d
-
and the first really
popular
counter games, widely
e
e
load .arcad
copied by w
others.
n
Do //www
: right, second from the end, is a venerable old Mills
ttp far
Now, to h
the
punchboards and five Mills TARGET PRACTICE counter games.
IMPROVED JUDGE, another original
sold new well into the teens.
© The International Arcade Museum
1898
machine
still
being
http://www.arcade-museum.com/

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