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The mechanical one-armed bandit mechanism is probably one of the most amazing mechanical contraptions ever invented, and it didn't change much throughout its history. With a single pull of the handle it has to spin the reels, stop the reels one by one, detect the position of the reels, work out the ...

Interesting project. You'll probably need some basic metalworking facilities as well. I made something similar in the 60s, 30 years before I'd ever seen the insides of a one-armed bandit. Firstly, you don't need 2 coin input chutes (which probably wouldn't work well anyway) the microswitch can detec...

Some have a little knob you turn that pulls back a spring-loaded ratchet which kicks the spinning dial or arrow. This seems unnecessarily elaborate when a coin can do the job. The reason for the more complicated mechanism is to give a much more accurate prediction. Obviously, the more the player in...

It's your site, and you can do what you like with it, but whether it is wise to do so is another matter. I'm with margamatix on this one. I think you're not doing yourself any favours by putting this rant on here, and it makes the site look cheap and tacky. It's not even an American site. If you mus...

I would guess that Parkers simply used old Bryans parts, probably from recovered machines. An early form of recycling! What would be the point of making that chrome surround exactly the same shape as a competitor's? It would have been just as easy to design your own shape. Another possibility is tha...

Just my thoughts! And very good ones. The administrator's absence and lack of intervention in this continues to baffle me. Does anybody know if he's gone away or something? Has anybody seen him recently? Has his computer broken? Does he have strong views on American politics? Has somebody else hija...

Yes. Three cheers for Jerry and all his efforts.

I only wish I lived closer to Brighton.

To suggest that this diatribe has any place here is nonsense- it cheapens and degrades the whole site. Please save this nonsense for Usenet. I think that's the whole point, to demonstrate how silly this off-topic rubbish is. As somebody said, if we can have a "Terrorists In The White House&quo...

Interesting answer. So why did he create atheists then?

Why would he create people who don't believe in him, only to send them to hell for not believing.

Is this further proof that God doesn't exist?

That is the Replay option. You swing the deflector one way or the other to give the player a free ball after a win. Try it! Its odd that W Bryan decided that the top three cups could be adjusted for payout (top left 6d - near impossible, and the other two 4d whilst all the rest are 2d) when there wa...

Well, that seems to have killed the topic stone-dead. Could we not make it a rule that people have to register before they can post? That's a bit of an extreme reaction. Any registered poster could have suggested the same thing. It's not the poster's fault that the topic was hijacked, he's only sug...

Perhaps during the Gapwin's development William Bryan discovered the game was far too easy and therefore developed the variable pressure unit, and also used it on the redesigned Pilwin, introduced the same year as the Gapwin, 1956. In any event the Gapwin is an enjoyable and lovely game to play. No...

Your seller is talking b*ll*cks. The last time I had a machine sent from the States it cost me around $220 (just over £110). You can have it sent Surface for much less than that, but it takes about 6 weeks to get here. I also had a Rol-A-Top sent over in a wooden crate by Fedex for $300 (about £150)...

Bent Copper might secretely use some skill to try and win as well, and that would invalidate the results.

Dammit . I was hoping nobody would think of that

As was pointed out by a previous contributor, the ball drops when it has lost its centrifugal momentum. Granted, it may still have a slightly angular approach but where it comes from is less important than where it first makes contact with the cups - either 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 or 7 . I think the diagram ...

PennyMachines wrote:If the Rhythm Play story was "utter rubbish", why did manufacturers see the need to introduce the variator in 1951?

Because they could.

It's the same as the Bryans device, just a sales gimmick. I don't believe there was a need for it.

Unfortunately, I can't do the experiments. I don't own a multicup, having dismissed them as "too random". As has already been pointed out by somebody else, if you think they are too random then you must think they are random. They can't be too random and not random at the same time! :P Ne...

Mr Kirkup said: " If there is an element of chance (e.g. the shuffling of the cards), I am satisfied that it is gaming." - the same reason that allwins are currently adjudged to be games of chance. The Gaming Board's opinion is as extreme as some of the contributors here, but in the oppos...

And I have to admit that I couldnt drop the ball in the same position with any certainty at all. The reason is that there seems to be a very fine line between the ball dropping to the left and dropping to the right and I don't think it's possible to operate the machine with that much precision just...

In your first post, you made the bold claim that the allwin game "is just as random as a one-arm bandit." In my first post I said there were some allwins in which luck predominates and others in which skill is significant. So I could accuse you of back-tracking by wishing to disqualify an...