C.O.C.A. Times

The number of songs that these machines played varied from manufacturer to manufacturer and some-
time from model to model. Some had as few as six songs while others played as many as twenty, but on an
average, most musical attachments played eight songs. These cylinder music boxes were the finest that
money could buy with the latest and most popular tunes of the day. You must remember that in most loca-
tions, there was little or no electricity back then and everything that moved or made a noise was mechan-
ical. To hear such beautiful music was a rare event for most people as there were no radios or jukeboxes
for entertainment so the musical upright was the rage and a very strong "DRAW!" It wasn't long before
aftermarket suppliers were offering musical "Kits" to allow the operators with non-musical gambling
machines to upgrade and convert their silent machines into symphonic wonders. These kits were often
cheap rip offs though so you don't see too many of the surviving on uprights today. It is estimated that less
than ten percent of the machines leaving the factory back then were equipt with the musical feature. One
drawback with music though was the fact that the music boxes could become a problem for the operators
after awhile. Many locations were frequented by a rough and tumble kind of crowd. The delicate mecha-
nisms of these fine instruments could become clogged with dust and dirt and the linkage could get out of
whack from patrons pounding on the machines after they had lost their weeks wages. Many of the old musi-
cal cabinet machines frustrated their owners with one too many service calls and eventually had their musi-
cal innards removed permanently. As a result, many uprights have been found lacking the music box that
was originally installed at the factory. You can still see the evidence of their past presents by the tell-tale
paper tags glued to the inside of the cabinet with instructions telling of the proper method to remove the
mechanism for service and how to reattach the linkage to the music box. Some will even show signs of
where the on/off switch for the music would have been located at one time.
It wasn't long before the smaller three reel slot
machines gained the favor of the operators and players
alike. Being smaller and lighter they took up less space
than the beautiful old floor machines. They too had the
same problem as the uprights, how to get around the
anti-gambling laws of the day. Music boxes were a bit
too expensive and too large to fit inside of their cast
iron cabinetry but the operators and manufacturers
were an inventive bunch and came up with numerous
other schemes to get around the law. Instead of selling
a song to the players they added an attachment to their
Mills black frontLAST slot machines that would physically vend a product with Mills Iowa Novelty
every play such as gum, candy, mints, etc. Using the same logic as the musical attachments the courts in
many parts of the country went along with this type of thinking and allowed machines to be operated as
long as they had the vending attachments. The technicality of being able to purchase a product and possi-
bly get money back out of the machine, "profit sharing", worked the same way as it did with the musical
uprights. Many of these venders held only a small supply of products to be taken by the player and would
have required an attendant to stand around all day and night to refill them, but the operators came up with
a solution to that problem also. They put the worst tasting, cheapest products in their venders that they
could come up with thus discouraging anyone from pulling the knob or lever that vended the gum or candy.
Players were also wise to the scheme as they were there to play the slot machine as a gambling device and
not to buy the product in the machine. Another method tried by the manufacturers back in the "Golden Era"
of slot machine development was to disguise their machines as some sort of amusement device where there
was some element of skill involved or your fortune would be told with every play. Skill stops could be
installed on a machine giving the player the illusion of having some control over where the reels stopped
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