The 'one armed bandit' was a slightly later invention and the forerunner of today's high tech gambling machines. The skill was to get the release tension just right so the ball went around the guide rails and dropped at a suitable angle into the winning slot.Īnd, of course, if you won too often the operator stopped you from playing. But these were skillfully placed so 90% of the time the ball just disappeared into one of the loser holes. You pulled back the spring loaded plunger and let it go with sufficient force to, hopefully, send a chrome ball whizzing around until it dropped through one of the winning holes. The earlier traditional machines had a mahogany case and the metal work was chrome plated brass. I don't know the full history of this type of machinery but it must be recorded somewhere. These machines probably go back to when I was a lad, say 50 years ago but would be based on designs which were possibly 100 years old. I reduced the image size to save space as I considered these images to have more general interest than 'photographic merit'. That is why the pound symbol is a letter L in a symbolic form. Which existed until our currency went digital around the 1970s. It comes from the latin words which signified our old currency of L S D Librae Solidi Denarii or pounds shillings pence.
