The author relates the story of the Barry family, Ireland 's largest amusement operators,
and traces the history of it' s sites at Portrush; Bangor; Bellevue and Belfast. The family
were also promoters and operators of travelling fairground and circus, and for over three
decades promoted the wall and globe of death.
The final chapter deals with some of the slot machines that were operated at
Barry' s Portrush and Bangor sites, and is an extremely interesting read. Much of the text
comes from the author's childhood memories and anecdotes from past employees, with
some interesting stories about cheating and fiddling machines. However, the author has
succumbed to that old wives tale with regard to predicting winning lines on one-armed
bandits, with stories of employees distracting players or pushing them out of the way
when the jackpot was imminent in order to play the machine themselves, and thus reap
the reward ... .... . sorry, l don't believe it!
The author describes many of the machines that were operated over the years, all of
which will be familiar to readers of this magazine, except perhaps one: the coin-operated
chip frying machine, which apparently (due to it's unreliability) was not a huge success!
This chapter is supported by a good number of pictures of the machines mentioned in
the text, although many of the pictures seem to be from Carter's arcade and are no doubt
intended to be merely illustrative.
However, of equal interest is reference in a previous chapter to Barry' s entry into
coin-op. manufacture, (and if you ' re interested in politics, the reason for doing so is
equally interesting). In 1966, the Labour government created the ' Selective Employment
Tax ', which was intended to stimulate a transfer of workers from service industries to
manufacturing. Businesses were taxed on the number of employees who could be
classified as being in service, but not on those in manufacturing. In order to circumvent
the tax, at least for many of it' s full time employees, Barry's commenced manufacture of
slot machines during the winter months. The author describes a ' Speak Your Fortune'
machine, which sounds rather like an improved version of Streets 'Telefortune' , and a
'Test Your Strength ' machine, where the player was required to push together two
Bull ' s horns, the force being registered on a scale. Sound familiar? This arm of the
business traded as Barry's Manufacturing Co., Portrush, and must have been a fairly
large operation, as they apparently exhibited at trade exhibitions and exported their
machines. So it would appear the author has brought to light a previously unknown slot
manufacturer. Has anyone heard of Barry's Manufacturing Co., Portrush? I' ve certainly
encountered several 1960s/70s strength testers with Bull ' s horns, which I recollect may
have been distributed by Samson, but I could be wrong. Could these be Barry' s
machines?
The book is priced £16.99 plus £1.69 p&p and can be ordered direct from the publishers:
COLOURPOINT BOOKS
Credit card orders phone: 028 9182 0505
Highly Recommended!
Page 5