Darwin's Old Time Slots (oldtimeslots.com) is Michigan's largest dealer. Buying, selling, repairing, restoring antique slot machines for almost 30 years. Restoration of vintage coin operated machines is Bill Darwin II's specialty. Get the best deals on Vintage Slot Machine when you shop the largest online selection at eBay.com. Free shipping on many items Browse your favorite brands affordable prices.
Antique Slot Machine Repair and Restoration History
Casino Restorations is a spinoff of a coin operated distributor in St. Paul, MN from the 1930’s until 1960. The doors were closed due to the death of the owner. Parts, tooling and a few machines were moved to new locations and operated from those locations until 1979 when my cherished friend and mentor passed away at the young age of 72.
Everything we had was consolidated to one location where we still operate in St. Paul, MN.
Antique Slot Machine Repair and Restoration Goals
Our goals have always been to do museum quality Antique Slot Machine Repair and Restoration from the late 1800’s into the 1940’s and Penny Arcade Machines and related items from the late 1800’s to 1930’s.
If you have a Machine but have no interest in repair or restoration of it, we would be interested in purchasing it from you.
Antique Slot Machine Repair and Restoration Knowledge
There are very few people in the United States remaining that have the knowledge and skill to properly work on vintage slot machines. There are even fewer companies that do it professionally on a daily basis. Out of those tiny handful of companies, none are corporations that fully insure your machine while in their shop and in transit, handle daily the national transport of antique slot machines or have a full time staff working ONLY ON ANTIQUE SLOT MACHINES; except for Casino Restorations.
With the ever increasing value of antique penny arcade machines, having them worked on by a company with trained staff that have years of experience and will stand behind their work is very important. Also, having a company that knows how to properly restore vintage slots in a factory original way is vital to preserving not only the integrity of the machine, but it’s current and future value.
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Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota
The Mutoscope is an early motion picture device, invented by W.K.L. Dickson and Herman Casler[1] and later patented by Herman Casler on November 21, 1894.[2] Like Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope, it did not project on a screen and provided viewing to only one person at a time. Cheaper and simpler than the Kinetoscope, the system, marketed by the American Mutoscope Company (later the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company), quickly dominated the coin-in-the-slot peep-show business.
Operation[edit]
The Mutoscope works on the same principle as the flip book. The individual image frames are conventional black-and-white, silver-based photographic prints on tough, flexible opaque cards. Rather than being bound into a booklet, the cards are attached to a circular core, similar to a huge Rolodex. A reel typically holds about 850 cards, giving a viewing time of about one minute.[3] The reel with cards attached has a total diameter of about 10 inches (25 cm); the individual cards have dimensions of about 23⁄4 in × 17⁄8 in (7.0 cm × 4.8 cm).
German Hand Crank Sewing Machine
Mutoscopes are coin-operated. The patron views the cards through a single lens enclosed by a hood, similar to the viewing hood of a stereoscope. The cards are generally lit electrically, but the reel is driven by means of a geared-down hand crank. Each machine holds only a single reel and is dedicated to the presentation of a single short subject, described by a poster affixed to the machine.
The patron can control the presentation speed only to a limited degree. The crank can be turned in both directions, but this does not reverse the playing of the reel. The patron cannot extend viewing time by stopping the crank, because the flexible images are bent into the proper viewing position by tension applied from forward cranking. Stopping the crank reduces the forward tension on the reels causing the reel to go backwards and the picture to move away from the viewing position. A spring in the mechanism turns off the light, and in some models closes a shutter which blocks the picture.
Manufacture[edit]
Mutoscopes were originally manufactured from 1895 to 1909 for the American Mutoscope Company, later American Mutoscope and Biograph Company (1899) by the Marvin & Casler Co., Canastota, New York formed by two of the founding Managers of American Mutoscope Company. In the 1920s the Mutoscope was licensed to William Rabkin who started his own company, the International Mutoscope Reel Company, which manufactured new reels and also machines from 1926 until 1949. The term 'Mutoscope' is no longer a registered trademark in the United States.
Usage[edit]
Mutoscopes were a popular feature of amusement arcades and pleasure piers in the UK until the introduction of decimal coinage in 1971. The coin mechanisms were difficult to convert, and many machines were subsequently destroyed. Some were exported to Denmark where pornography had recently been legalised. The typical arcade installation included multiple machines offering a mixture of fare. Both in the early days and during the revival, that mixture usually included 'girlie' reels which ran the gamut from risqué to outright soft-core pornography. It was common for these reels to have suggestive titles that implied more than the reel actually delivered. The title of one such reel, What the Butler Saw, became a by-word, and Mutoscopes are commonly known in the UK as 'What-the-Butler-Saw machines.' (What the butler saw, presumably through a keyhole, was a woman partially disrobing.)
Public response[edit]
The San Francisco Call printed a short piece about the Mutoscope in 1898, which claimed that the device was extremely popular: 'Twenty machines, all different and amusing views...are crowded day and night with sightseers.'[4] However, just a few months later, the same newspaper published an editorial railing against the Mutoscope and similar machines: '...a new instrument has been placed in the hands of the vicious for the corruption of youth...These vicious exhibitions are displayed in San Francisco with an effrontery that is as audacious as it is shameless.'[5]
In 1899, The Times also printed a letter inveighing against 'vicious demoralising picture shows in the penny-in-the-slot machines. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the corruption of the young that comes from exhibiting under a strong light, nude female figures represented as living and moving, going into and out of baths, sitting as artists' models etc. Similar exhibitions took place at Rhyl in the men's lavatory, but, owing to public denunciation, they have been stopped.'
Notes[edit]
Hand Crank For Sewing Machine
- ^Robinson, David (1996). From Peep Show to Palace: the Birth of American Film. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 56. ISBN0-231-10338-7.
- ^Spehr, Paul C. (2000). 'Unaltered to Date: Developing 35mm Film,' in Moving Images: From Edison to the Webcam, ed. John Fullerton and Astrid Söderbergh Widding, pp. 3–28 (p. 17). Sydney: John Libbey & Co.
- ^Mutoscopes & Reels, Gameroom Show.
- ^'The Mutoscope'. The San Francisco Call. San Francisco, CA. 6 November 1898. Retrieved 4 January 2017.
- ^'The Corruption of Youth'. The San Francisco Call. San Francisco, CA. 1 April 1899. Retrieved 4 January 2017.
External links[edit]
- Penny Arcade, poem by Jared Carter describes tightrope-walk images viewed through a Mutoscope.
- Streible, Dan (Autumn 2003). 'Children at the Mutoscope'. Journal of Film Studies. Cinémas. 14 (1): 91–116. doi:10.7202/008959ar.
Media related to Mutoscope at Wikimedia Commons