The phonoscope (Nov 1896-Dec 1899)

Vol. I. No. 11 THE] PHONOSCOPE 11 are five slots into which the nickel may be dropped, and on pressing down a handle bar the wheel is set in motion, and if it stops on the color into which the nickel has been dropped the player makes a winning. Red and black pa) ten cents each, green twenty-five cents, yellowfifty cents and white one dollar. As most players play the three higher colors, their chance to win is but slight, as nearly every other color on the wheel is red or black, and there are but few strips of green, white or yellow. When the wheel stops on the luck}' color the money drops out into a pocket on the side. This in brief is a description of the most popular style of nickel-in-the-slot machine in Denver. It is innocent in appearance, but deadly in its results. It has beggared many fortunes, embittered many lives and enriched all its owners. At any hour of the day and night almost there may be seen crowded about these machines men of all ranks and ages, and the steady whir of the wheel has become as familar as the rumbling of the cable beneath Sixteenth street. The peculiar fascination of the machine is unexplainable, as but few ever make a winning, and the gains of the machine are something enormous. The per cent in favor of the house is much higher than in any other gambling game, but the nickel-in-the-slot machine is not a gambling game, as upon each machine there is a sign on which is inscribed in plain letters, "This is not a gambling game, but a trade device." Thus the edict of the fire and police board against gambling is complied with and the owners of these machines are permitted to operate them in plain view of all. The trembling hand, tottering form, dulled eye and suspicious disposition are the leading characteristics of the nickel-in-the-slot gambler_ Their principal recruits come from the idle young men about town, officials, and others holding more or less public positions. Continued indulgence in the passion renders a man unfit for ordinary duties. There is a continued tendency to at once get rid of every nickel that comes into his possession by playing it on the omnipresent machine, and all small change is speedily changed into nickels for gambling purposes. It is related that at one time the patrons of the Orphan's home were agreeably surprised to find one of their tin boxes which they have nailed up in conspicuous places inscribed with the device, "Please help the orphans," filled almost to the brim with nickels. It was afterward ascertained that a local politician, who is known as one of the most reckless plungers on the nickel-in-the-slot machine, had mistaken the box for a machine and played it until his entire month's salary had been exhausted in the hope of making a winning. And still this experience was not sufficient warning for the victim to discontinue his nickel-in-the-slot habit. Many instances could be related of the folly of the indulgence in this passion if space permitted. It is said that it has even become a passion in fashionable society and that this winter nickel-in-the-slot parties and nickel-in-the-slot teas will become the fashionable thing. This deplorable condition in Denver is probably attributable to but one thing, and that is the abolition of all other forms of gambling, a movement, perhaps, praiseworthy in itself, but nevertheless productive of most unfortunate results. It has made possible that saddest spectacle ever witnesed by a human being — the nickel-in-the-slot gambler. With this issue, many subscriptions expire, and we invite those who wish to renew again to fill in blank herewith enclosed and send same, together with subscription price, to the Phonoscope Publishing Company. Slot flfoacbtnes A novel gas meter has been in use in Springfield for about a week, being on tlae principle of the nickel-in-the-slot machine. You deposit your twenty-five-cent piece and the meter reels off that amount of gas. The meter is an experiment here, though it is used quite extensively in other cities. The particular advantage is the hold it gives the gas company on transients who frequently change their residences without going to the trouble of paying their gas bills. With a pay-as-you-want-the-gas meter that difficulty is obviated. The population here is very stable, and there is hardly the need of such meters here that there might be in other cities. The machine consists of a simple attachment to an ordinary gas meter. The only difference apparent to the eye is the addition of a small, clock-shaped attachment at the left-hand side of the meter, where the feed pipe comes in, into which the coin is dropped; and a small, red hand, moving horizontally over the other dials of the meter, and registering on a horizontal scale directly under it, the figures on which run from zero to ten. When a quarter is dropped into the slot the feed pipe is opened, just as the beam is released in an automatic weighing-machine, while by the dropping of the coin the horizontal hand is pushed along until it rests at 2^, this being the number of hundred feet sold for a quarter. As the gas runs through it registers on the meter in the ordinary manner, and also pushes the horizontal hand back toward the zero mark, so that this hand always indicates the amount of gas paid for and not used. When the hand reaches the zero mark the gas is automatically cut off, and an offering of another quarter is necessary to have the illumination continued. If four quarters are dropped in, one after another, the hand is pushed up to ten, indicating that i ,ooo feet have been paid for, and the same is relatively true of two or three quarters. From this description it will be seen that the gas is supplied in this way at exactly the same price as when a regular meter is put in and the gas is furnished by the month. It might be thought that these machines would frequently be tampered with, but as a matter of fact the danger is not so great as with a slot machine of some other type, because the machine is never put in in a common place like a cellar or hallway, but in the room or tenement of each separate family, so that the occupants are definitely responsible for what happens to it. The machines have been in use for some time now, and so far as is known there has never been a case of one of them being tampered with, either by the substitution of some other object for a quarter, or by the abstraction of the whole or a part of its contents. The coins drop into a small metal pouch after passing through the operating machinery, and this is locked with a padlock, the key of which is kept by the company, and is only opened by the collector when he makes his rounds. Philadelphia has a real philanthropist. He proposes to give persons postage stamps and postal cards free. He does it through a slot machine. The philanthropist is W. R. Thomas, a bookseller. His machine has two compartments, one of which is to contain two-cent postage stamps and the other postal cards. Each stamp is enclosed in a neat wrapper four inches wide and six inches long. Two postal cards are inclosed in a like wrapper and each machine will contain 500 postage stamps and i,coo postal cards. The person wanting a stamp or a postal card drops a penny into the machine on the proper side and obtains a two-cent stamp or two postal cards, as desired, and has paid therefore one cent for the package. The wrappers are to contain the cards of merchants and manufacturers, and one of these cards in each wrapper is redeemable at the store selling the article advertised for one cent. Thus the stamp or postal card has cost the user nothing. The card which the merchant has redeemed is likewise redeemable by the company owning the machines, so the merchant is repaid. A small charge for the cards on the wrappers pays the company for the cost of the stamps and postal cards and the operation of the system, and on the large number of machines employed and advertising space consumed yields good returns on the capital invested. The merchants with whom the machines are placed reap the benefit of increased patronage through the call for stamps and the people secure the benefit of free postage, while the Government gets the full revenue from their sale to the company and an increase by the enlarged use from free distribution. Preference will be given stockholders of the company in the location of the machines, which will be placed in drug stores, grocery stores, cigar stores and dry goods stores and like places. A system is now in use in Berlin and other European cities which furnishes postage at less than half the Government charges, but Mr. Thomas's plan eliminates all cost to the user, except to large consumers. William Reeves, of New Haven, Conn., has recently obtained through his attorneys, Robinson & Fisher, a patent on an improvement on kaleidoscopes, in the nature of a slot machine which exhibits by reflection an endless variety of beautiful colors and symmetrical forms, when set in motion by a coin deposited in the slot or chute thereof. The device, which is called the multiscope, consists primarily of a casing, in the front of which is an aperture having a lens therein. A slot is also formed in the front casing for the reception of a coin, which, by falling through an inclined chute, sets a clock mechanism in operation, and at the same time forms an electric connection for a tiny incandescent lamp. In line with the aperture in the front of the casing is a triangular tube, having on its interior sides reflecting mirrors similar to those used in the ordinary kaleidoscope. In the rear of this tube is a large disc on which various substances, including pictures, colored glass, etc., are affixed, while in the rear of this disc is the electric light. This disc is rigidly secured to a shaft which is rotated by the clock mechanism, so that the substances on the disc are brought successively past the reflecting mirrors where they present to the eye the most beautiful as well as gorgeous geometric combination of colors, which are made even more multiplex by the raising and lowering of the reflecting mirrors, which is done by means of a lever on the side of the case. Mr. Reeves is also the inventor and patentee of the stereo-cosmorama, a coin-controlled stereopticon device, which gives to the magnified object the solid appearance and relief that ordinary objects have when seen with the naked eye, and which is in use in nearly every public place throughout the country. The stereo-cosmorama is operated in the main by incorporated companies having already been formed in Montreal, Portland, San Francisco, Philadelphia and other places, including New Haven, where Mr. Reeves is president of The Optical Novelty Company.