Mechanical Memories Magazine

First, the trigger. Why bother? Why not just have the player insert his coin at the top of the
machine and let it bounce around a few pins and find it's own path? Well, by allowing the
player to fire his coin, he is deluded into thinking he has some control. And if he thinks he
has control, he'll apply that old addage ' practice makes perfect'. This is the first rule of
encouraging repeat play: ' let the punter think he can beat the machine'! In reality of coarse,
the player has very little control, although with practice he would probably stand a better
chance. The good news for the operater was that the amount of money a player would
need to spend in order to get some sort of 'feel' with the trigger, would more than
sufficiantly pay for the odd 'good cigar' he might win!
Second, by giving the player 'control' it could be interpreted as 'skill' . This was to be
an extremely important element in future machine design. As the automatics industry grew
through the 1890s and into the twentieth century, the authorities became increasingly
ant oanistic toward games of chance.
Early Tivoli, Haydon and Urry Ltd c. !890s
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