Coin Slot Magazine - #042 - 1978 - July [International Arcade Museum]
What They Looked Like
by Dick Bueschel
As collectors of slot machines we tend to spend our time trying
to track down the next gem, and then figure out what we've got.
In recent years this effort has gotten a little more sophisticated,
with collectors and machine historians trying to learn more about
where the machines came from, why, and how they were made
and marketed.
This quickly pops us out of the machine class and
into the study of people, and the businesses they served.
In the slot machine industry the people were always more im
portant than the machines, and for a simple reason.
It was the
people in the slot machine industry that made the machines, and
it was people that operated them.
New machines came out of how
they were run, and who was making them.
Now that a lot of us are beating our brains out trying to find
old operators all over the country we're beginning to hear names
that we never heard before; and they are obviously important
people because their names pop up so often. I've learned that it
helps a lot to know who these people were so that when an old
operator says that "Vince Shay came over to see me himself, and
we worked the new machine idea out right then and there," I
can come back with; "Well, did Mills make it after that?".
With
that kind of background knowledge a conversation and an inter
view can really take off.
So who are these fabled slot machine people of the past, and
The trade press of the day thought enough
about them to feature them in their stories and continually run
blurbs about their activities. Most everybody knew Herb Mills
what were they like?
when he was alive, and later Fred.
The mysterious Ed Pace was
well known, as was old Adolph Caille. But the others? When the
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Here is a h selection of some of them, with a brief blurb. Maybe
coin machine convention was set up for 1932 Bl LLBOARD maga
some time when you've got an old operator interview you might
ask about Jeff Field, or Art Cooley, or Vince and watch them
turn on.
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