Coin Slot

Coin Slot Magazine - #068 - 1980 - October [International Arcade Museum]
Meet
Dick Bueschel
Continued from page 7
happened to be waiting tables at a summer resort. The first
evening the owner asked the group if any of them knew
Mills' Novelty Company Plant No. 1 in Chicago.
something about slot machines. Not being overly shy,
Dick piped up and said he was an expert. As in stories of
old, our young man was left to do his work alone in the
waning hours on a machine he had never seen before. His
only credentials were delivering papers to the manufac
turers of those machines. "Needless to say, I was up all
night the first night, and the second night in a row. But as I
took the machine apart, slid out the mech and began to
fiddle with it I learned that (as old slot experts will say) The
machine will take care of you.' It wasn't simple to be sure,
new machine that the chief engineers were working on.
They invited Dick to take a look—into the hallowed halls of
Mills. (Again his life is crisscrossed by slot machines.)
Dick recalls going into the Mills factory, "The Philippine
Mahogany corridor, the Art Deco wall lamps, the circular
reception desk that looked like a Show Biz ticket office and
the always smiling people. Bob (I forget his last name) was
very proud of what he was working on and showed me. It
was a large slot machine with a high back and top that
looked
completely
unlike
the
old
WAR
EAGLE
I
remembered from my summer resort days. Bob said that
they had just brought it out as something called the
JEWEL and that they thought it just might be the best thing
that ever happened to them. Bob was deep at work on a
bunch of varieties of the same machine that were going to
be
introduced
the
next
year.
These
were
the
first
Hightops."
Mills SILENT (Wr Eagle) Bell Machine
but it was logical. Piece by piece, part by part, I watched
the systems operate and saw what went where. By six the
next morning I had it humming and was counting symbols
and calculating odds. When the old man came in and saw it
running he glowed and said 'Hey, you really DO know
these things.' For the rest of the summer I was the 'Slot
om
m.c
Boss' for that old WAR EAGLE and got my pin money as
:
rom -museu
f
d
e more
Force (based in Germany),
ade college, marriage, work
oad finally
l
c
r
n
a
as an engineer
and
a
w. career in advertising in the
Dow //ww field.
specialized industrial
:
While working
http as a design engineer in the4100 block on
my 5% share of the take."
Then followed a year of City College, a stint in the Air
Mills Hightop JEWEL Bell Machine
Dick was very impressed by the Mills factory as he daily
watched truck after truck pull away from their loading
dock. "Whatever that slot machine was, I thought, it was
certainly successful." A change of jobs took him away
from the source of all those machines.
west Fullerton Avenue in Chicago, Dick chanced to meet
two design draftsmen who worked in the big factory next
door. They were "detailers" making parts drawing for a
— THE COIN SLOT
© 8 The
International Arcade Museum
Continued in the November Issue.
OCTOBER, 1980
http://www.arcade-museum.com/