Coin Slot Location

Location
In 1891 the newly formed firm of Sittman and
Pitt, of Brooklyn, New York, began marketing
their version c f the machine, known as the Little
Model Card Machine. Although not the first of its
kind it soon became, through successful sales and
promotion, the first nationally popular automatic
gambling machine in the United States, remaining
in continuous production until 1910.
The solution to the problem of how to mechanise
a game of cards that these machines adopted was
relatively simple. A number of playing cards were
attached edge-on to a drum, so that they flipped
over as the drum spun. Since a hand of poker
requires five cards, five drums in line were
adopted, only one card on each drum being
allowed to show at any one time. To further
approximate the game, each drum was made so
that it could accommodate ten cards, giving a
total of 50, just two cards short of a full pack.
Insertion of a coin enabled the player to operate a
lever which would cause the drums to spin and
then stop, as a mechanical equivalent to the
shuffling and dealing out of hand of cards. The
principles and mode of play that the Little Model
Card Machine helped to establish were within a
few years being copied by other manufacturers.
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Playing cards
The one significant change that this type of
machine underwent in the 1890s was the
substitution of actual playing cards, which were
flipped over as the drums spun, by strips of paper
which were stuck on to the drums, upon which
were printed cards, or card symbols. Probably the
first to adopt, and certainly to popularise this
system, was the firm of Leo Canda of Cincinnati,
Ohio.
Unlike the later Fey machine, five reel 'card'
machines had no automatic payout. Instead, a
reward chart on the machine would list the
awards, in goods or cash, that the player could
obtain from the operator if certain hands
appeared. The payout on this type of machine was
never automated, and as a consequence it remains
historically classified as a Trade Stimulator rather
than a gambling machine. By the end of the 1890s
there was technically no reason to prevent the
incorporation of an automatic payout on this type
of machine. The stumbling block appears to have
been a lack of foresight on the part of
manufacturers rather than a lack of technical
knowledge.
Developments in this area were in fact
synchronous with the introduction of the five
reeler. Indeed as early as 1889 the Eureka Box
Company of Baltimore, Maryland, began
manufacturing the Eureka. It was a counter
machine whose main feature was a visible jackpot,
which filled at random as coins were played into
the machine. The weight of the coins would
eventually cause the jackpot container to tip and
drop the coins into the payout cup. However, the
machine was easily defrauded, a good shaking
would make it pay out as gladly as if the player
had won by more legitimate means. Needless to
say the Eureka was a commercial failure.
Simplicity
In 1892 the John Lighton Machine Company of
Syracuse, New York introduced the Slot Machine,
later known as the 3 for 1. Despite its
simplicity, the payout on the 3 for 1 represented a
major advance upon that of the Eureka. It was
mechanically controlled and proved reliable. The
3 for 1 belonged to a class of gambling machine
which was derived from earlier fairground 'drop-
case' or Tivoli games. In this instance a nickel
dropped into the machine had two possible
courses, to travel either into the cash box or along
another path which enabled it to trip a lever which
would automatically deliver to the player his own
coin back as well as two others from an interior
runway. The machine's intitial success ensured
that it was widely copied, as a consequence
establishing the principle of a fully automatic
payout.
As the decade progressed these relatively simple
mechanisms were gradually refined, and to no
greater extent than in the Pin Wheel machines
(automatic wheels of fortune) which, by the turn
of the century, had become the most popular form
of automatic gambling machine in the United
States. As early as 1877 Edward J. McLaughlin of
New York had patented and manufactured a
small countertop machine known as the Guessing
Bank. Insertion of a coin would cause a pointer to
spin around a numbered dial. The player's
objective was to call out in advance the number at
which he thought the pointer would stop. A
correct call would entitle him to a house-paid
award amounting to five times his original stake.
It remains to date the oldest known machine
specifically made for gambling by means of the
insertion of a coin.