Coin Slot Magazine - #033 - 1977 - October [International Arcade Museum]
Honest Injun
They Named A Machine HONEST JOHN
By Dick BuescheS
Back in the days when a grifter could
take the suckers with the three-shell
game, patent medicines were often
bottled death, and gambling machines
were bugged so far in favor of the
house that a player might have done
better by throwing his money down a
well, a machine came out that would
ultimately
have
straightening
a
lot
out the
mess it was indeed.
to
mess.
do
with
And a
By the middle
and late 1890's the wires on the old
electric floor machines had been so
criss-crossed, and the color wheel stops
so completely plugged, the players just
give
up.
OSHKOSH,
MISSOURI
The
5-WAY
CHICAGO
ELECTRIC,
RIDGE
and
machines that had been
the hits of the day began to sit idle in
"""""'
the saloons and salons across the coun
try.
The appearance of the mechani
cal Mills OWL in 1897 gave the play
a shot in the arm, so to speak, but by the next year even the
"mechanicals" had failed their players by being fixed to the point
where any payout above 2 for 1 was all but impossible to hit. The
locations had gotten greedy; and the players all but quit.
That's when HONEST JOHN came along.
At a time when Schall,
.com
m
u
e
Mills, Caille, Cahill and others were putting percentage plugs on
:
rom -mus
f
d
e in place on the star wheel drum-a
de snap
cut the payout
them
ad
oa was
l
c
r
n
a
group of
enthusiasts in Kalamazoo, Michigan formed
Dow slot / to /w machine
ww. automatic
a company
make
color wheel machines that players
:
ttp
could h
believe in.
The key men were Arthur E. Chamber and
their floor machines at the factory-all the operator had to do to
Chandler G.
Bullard,
Kalamazoo mechanics and
metal workers
that saw^an opportunity in the booming slot machine business.
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It
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