C.O.C.A. Times

Domino, Model 4 was listed in the British reference
"bible", Arcades And Slot Machines With A-Z
British Manufacturers 1870 - 1970 by Paul
Braithwaite as technically having been manufac-
tured by London Automatic Machine Company, the
successor to Handan-Ni LTD. of London. (Should
you wish to add this book to your collection, contact
fellow C.O.C.A. member and all around good guy,
Roger Hilden at www.Crowrivertrading.com. Tell
Roger I sent you!) According to Braithwaite, the
name change was due primarily to the difficulty the
Handan-Ni employees had getting their potential
customers to understand the name of the company
over the telephone. The game is a basic ball-catch-
ing scheme. You deposit a large British penny in the
slot and receive six wooden balls. You then turn the
handle at the bottom right of the case and a wood
ball is propelled to the top where it drops out the
center hole and onto the pinfield. With the large
knob on the left midway up the case, you control the
cup and attempt to catch the ball as it exits the pin-
field. If you are successful, you turn the right knob
midfield and it advances the arrow (which is miss-
ing on my game) in the center of the domino circle
on the bottom portion of the playfield. If you are
skilled enough to be able to catch four balls, the
"jackpot" is released and you receive a grand total
of one penny. Quite a handsome return for all that
effort, won't you agree? Right?? Who am I kidding?
Compared to the American slots of the same vin-
tage, this is a game designed by Old Scrooge him-
self. So, what gives with the miserly payout on these
British games? And why do you have to work so
hard to get it? To answer this question, it is impor-
tant to recognize the differences between the
American and British approaches to gambling and
their national personalities to some extent.
negotiate the priviledge of coming to pick up the
machine in person, The seller would just have to
hold on to it for a month or so until I could arrange
my schedule to get a layover in a nearby city. The
seller was in New Jersey, a little way over the state
line from Philadelphia. He agreed.
The next month found me in my rental car buzzing
Northbound late one afternoon on my way to
assume custody to my newest child. All I can say is
"Thank God for Mapquest" ! Without that service, I
would still be driving around the countryside of
southern New Jersey. I will never understand why
Jimmy Hoffa wanted to be buried under the express-
way next to Newark Airport when there are miles
and miles of bucolic
countryside just over the
Pennsylvania State line.
As the sun was setting in
the West, I pulled into the
palatial estate of the sell-
er. He met me in the
garage and introduced
me to "Domino, Model
4". It was love at first
sight. I vaguely remem-
ber him saying something about "don't refinish the
case" but that's about it. I was afraid he would
change his mind even though I had already paid for
the machine. Besides, I was the British game expert,
not him. I put the game in my car and started back
on my two-hour drive to my hotel outside the airport
in Philadelphia.
I'm going to leave out the part where I get lost.
There seem to be certain consistancies to my adven-
tures and unfortunately, getting lost is one of them.
This time, I had no one to blame but myself and the
twisty, turny little roads I was navigating in the dark.
I did eventually find my way back to my hotel. I got
the machine through Security the next morning with
no trouble and the ride home in the cockpit was
uneventful as well. All the way home, I kept think-
ing: "I'm a brain surgeon! I'm a brain surgeon!!
This will be such a piece of cake"! I could not have
been more wrong.
9
In America, the earliest gambling devices were
games of chance. You deposited your money and set
the machine in motion. From that point forward,
Lady Luck was your co-pilot, stewardess and bag
smasher. American ingenuity vested in creating big-
ger and bigger jackpots inside more ornate case-
work. Even our trade stimulators, for the most part,
were games of chance. It was in keeping with the