TOM
WAT
LING
Coin
Slot Magazine
- #042
- 1978 - July [International Arcade Museum]
Here's a name that most of us know. Tom was quite a figure,
and had the lip of a
logger; he swore all the
time.
Old Tom was
known as, "The Grand-
daddy of Them All"
by 1932 because he
had been in the bus-
iness so long.
He had
just opened up his
new plant on
west Fulton Street
when this car-
toon was drawn,
and had put
his sons in
charge of the
business,
Watling was
crusty, tough
gar
in
always had a ci-
his
mouth,
short as hell
out with
a
new
was
Watling scale a-
round this time that
was small and fitted
into a corner, they
THUMB.
and
When they came
called it the TOM
Logical-
Watling
had
been
called "Tom
Thumb" for years, and
he didn't mind
it at all
Watling hung
around the coin machine
shows for another decade,
dying in 1943 at a time when
the slot machine industry
was at a
dead end
GEOFFREY
FIELD
You've heard the
name,
Jeff
anyway
Field
—
and
due to the war.
now
his
small punch board
name — The Field
here's the man.
father
had
a
business in Peoria,
Illinois, at the end
of the twenties.
They called it the
Field Paper Pro-
ducts Company.
When Charlie
Fey redesigned the
old Victorian Claw-
son THREE JACK
POT into a modern
machine with a me-
tal cabinet as the
THREE JACKS, Jeff
the machine and star-
Just as it had been in
ted making them,
Field picked up
om
its Victorian
m.c
:
u
m
e
JACKS
was a
s
original, the THREE fro
ed Jeff ade-mu
Field renamed
d
runaway success, a and
o Field
nl the
Manufacturing
.arc
his company
w
o
w
D
w
w
JACKS
led to
Company.
THREE
/
/
:
http then FIVE JACKS, and production by a lot of
FOUR JACKS,
Wisconsin Novelty and
But the Field
a bunch of others,
machine started it all. You can spot one by a big "F" in the casting.
other people, including Rockola, Keeney
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