British roulette Town Broker

[john t peterson]

Anyone have the roulette "Town Broker" by Premier Automatic Machine Co. circa 1929? If you do, I would appreciate a picture of the mechanism, specifically the coin drop and the coin activated wheel release feature. I just refinished my game but it's missing this feature and I would like to replace it provided I can see an example. Thanks in advance for the assistance. Your Yankee correspondent. John Peterson

[john t peterson]

My long-standing problem with TOWN BROKER has been satisfactorily resolved but from a source you would not expect, half a world away. To get the whole story, stand-by for an up-coming issue of "Mechanical Memories Magazine" where the amazing chain of events is laid out before your very eyes. Now, if someone would just look in that shed out back and discover another example of AUTO TALKIE for me!

John Peterson, USA

[pennymachines]

I look forward to reading it John. Do you have a picture of the mechanism? The majority of stock-broker type wall machines appear to be by Essex Manufacturing Co. or are more-or-less clones of Essex machines. Premier Automatic's Town Broker seems to be the only one with the extra twist of a skill-stop mechanism. A rare one too.

[john t peterson]

Hi Mr. Pennymachines,

That is a great picture of the game at the time they were introduced. It also answered another question I had: Was the dial window at the top of the game unrestricted (as shown in your photo) or was the window slot reduced by shading on both sides so that only the winning name is revealed at the very top as the disc rotates? This may seem a little confusing to those not familiar with the game. A fuller explanation is in my article soon to be published in "Mechanical Memories Magazine." Attached is a photo of the mechanism. The mechanism is actually simpler than those in the "Exchange" games by Essex Auto Manufacturing Co. Ltd. This seems counter-intuitive since "Town Broker" is an auto-pay machine and the "Exchange" games are "future pay" with manual activation during the play of the next coin.

[JC]

Yes, a most interesting machine. Not least because unlike the Essex machines and Bradshaw Little Stockbroker, Town Broker is a true roulette machine because the disc spins freely, as opposed to 'bouncing about' to the next predetermined position.

I shall be publishing John's full story in the April issue of the mag.

[pennymachines]

Actually Jerry - the disc spins freely on Essex machines, but as John says - it's interesting how the Town Broker mechanism achieves a little more with rather less.

[JC]

Er, sorry! I appear to have been talking balls again. To be honest, I've never owned or even played an Essex machine - I just recall hearing at some time in the past that they work in the same way as the Stockbroker machines. Clearly I was misinformed.

Jerry

[operator bell]

"Predetermined payout machine ... definite percentage retained by the machine"

I wonder if those words from the flyer mean what they say? In these parts, they have a definite meaning - that it's a "Class 2" game, the mechanical equivalent of a punch-board or a roll of scratch-off lottery cards. Each result, win or lose, happens once and once only and when they're all used up, the operator resets the mechanism and it all happens over again. This mechanism doesn't look complicated enough.

[pennymachines]

I suppose the Town Broker and Essex Exchanges could be said to retain a definite percentage on average as do all mechanical bandits (if a "definite average" isn't a contradiction in terms).

Bradshaw's Little Stockbroker and Flying Colours machine, a rare Essex racing game and punch-card pre-programmed betting machines like Paces Races are about the only truly predetermined games I can think of.

The Little Stockbroker (Patent GB288744) took a belt and braces approach to skirting all British gaming regulations of the day. The payouts appear random (unless the player keeps a log) but are entirely predetermined. You might think the absence of any element of chance would have been enough, but Bradshaw anticipated the next objection. OK, technically it's not a game of chance, but to a player ignorant of the payout sequence it's analogous to a shuffled pack of cards. The winning symbols are pre-ordered but hidden. To get around that, he incorporated the future payout system whereby the player doesn't receive the prize for a winning symbol until the next turn on the machine. This crafty ruse meant that the machine effectively advertised the outcome of the next play. The sequence was no longer hidden because the next payout or non-payout was displayed in advance. The next symbol after that, which is what the player was really gambling on, wasn't, of course. Unfortunately, the result of all this ingenuity was a very dull game, but that was neither the fault of the predetermined sequence nor the future payout. The comparative abundance of surviving Little Stockbrokers attest to its success in circumventing the prevailing gaming restrictions.

There was a real downside to future payouts - players rarely read instructions and were liable to abuse attendants or machines which failed to pay on winning symbols. The upside for watchful players was moving in on unclaimed prizes.

It's apparent from the number of stockbroker-type games that sprang onto the scene that the future payout ruse was seen as a way forward. Although they had freely spinning discs, in a narrow sense they could still claim to be "predetermined". The payout could be "determined" by the symbol displayed before you inserted another coin.

So was the Town Broker a "Predetermined payout machine" or was that an error or deliberate attempt to confuse by association? It is evidently a stockbroker class game, so I assumed it was future payout until John said otherwise. Mechanically, there's little difference. All that would be required is an obstructing paddle that closes during payout and opens at the start of next play. Did it originally have one which was removed as regulations slackened or was the "skill control" this game's only fig leaf? I'm curious to know exactly what it says on the instruction card.

[john t peterson]

Friends,

I fear I am the cause of some of the confusion here although not deliberately. When I wrote that Town Broker is an auto-pay machine, I was incorrect. It is not an automatic pay-out. When you score a winner, you must turn another knob and manually activate the pay-out mechanism just like you would on most allwins. The pay-out is made on the winning coin, not a future coin that must be deposited like the Essex games or the Little Stockbroker. None the less, the pay-out itself is manually activated. I apologize for misleading the experts. The game was not in front of me and I was thinking (incorrectly and inadvertently) of the mechanism of La Girouette, another machine which is the subject of an up-coming article. Mea culpa!

Your American Knucklehead

[pennymachines]

Well, a separate payout knob kills my future payout theory I guess. I'm still curious to know what all those detailed instructions say.

[john t peterson]

"Instructions
Insert penny -
Turn centre knob slowly to the left -
When wheel is rotating and to catch winner turn centre knob further round in the same direction.
Turn knob on left for win."

[operator bell]

Thanks for the patent reference, Penny Machines, and thank heaven for the Patent Office as an archive. Unfortunately in the USA they didn't allow any patents on gambling devices, on the grounds that gambling devices were not "useful", until the 1960s. Consequently there are few public records of the old US slot industry. Nowadays you can get a patent for anything, as witness US patent number 6208318 granted to IGT in 2001 for using a fan to cool the inside of a slot machine. Gee, to think nobody thought of it before!

Future pay is gone, but predetermined games are very common in the USA, used wherever gambling isn't allowed

[JC]

OK, so the Town Broker is not a future pay machine, but this still doesn't answer the intriguing 'predetermined payout' claim on the original flyer. The outcome from a disc spinning freely (or three reels) is purely random, and an average percentage is purely statistical - theoretically based on an infinate number of games. A game of chance is certainly not predetermined.

[john t peterson]

If I may weigh in here, I would venture to guess that the "predetermined pay-outs" is reference to the fact that if you are able to stop the wheel on the "winners," they being "England, Ireland and Scotland," then you get the "predetermined" amount of coins advertised on the award card. Since there is a skill feature to the game, the player can influence the amount won to some degree. Because of that, the percentage returned to the house cannot be certain. The statement on the flyer, "definite percentage retained by machine" is false if by definition, "definite" means "sum certain, known in advance."

[pennymachines]

So it's just another case of an advertiser's strained relationship with the truth.

Modern patent law is such a farce. I wonder when the condition that an idea be "non-obvious" was dropped.
Although U.S. patents were only granted if they were deemed "sufficiently useful and important" they do include some slots (quite apart from European patents of American machines). I've not studied many but here's one of my favourites - Western Equipment's 1935 Mysterious Eye US2135182

[operator bell]

Modern patent law is such a farce. I wonder when the condition that an idea be "non-obvious" was dropped.

That would be about the time the "Attorneys Full Employment Act" passed into law, I imagine ;) The US Patent Office is seriously starved for money. All the filing and examination fees go into the general Federal budget and only a pittance goes back to run the office, so they're understaffed and underpaid. Consequently it's much easier to pass the burden off to the courts, and by the time a dispute comes to court the original examiner has left the Patent Office and become a lawyer, ready and waiting to attack (or defend) his own work for a very much higher fee. I imagine it's much the same in Europe, where - I note after making a number of searches - they haven't even managed to get most of it online yet.

It is noticeable that the most litigious companies, the ones filing 60-100 patents a year, usually get many of them approved by the same examiner. I wonder how many of these examiners subsequently get hired by their clients.

Now we've driven that well off-topic, how about developing a new machine called the "Town Patent Lawyer"? Everyone loses until it hits on the "Litigation" position, and then the player has to insert five more pounds.

[bob]

Post moved, merged, split & edited from: Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines - Site Admin.

...Many, many years later, when I started collecting coin op machines I explored this operator’s abandoned premises in the basement of a derelict ice skating rink. There I found a couple of wrecks of machines that I restored, a Town Broker and a Target Skill, some parts and pinball back glasses and some interesting correspondence and other printed materials. But that’s another story, for another time...

[pennymachines]

Post moved, merged, split & edited from: Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines - Site Admin.

Is the cabinet on the Town Broker original or did you have to rebuild it?

[bob]

Post moved, merged, split & edited from: Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines - Site Admin.

For the Town Broker all I had was the front door with no hardware on the front and most, but not all of the mechanism, on the back. I got some help at the time with the mechanism, from a British collector friend in the UK Graham Brierley, with whom I was corresponding and some years later visited at his home in Chester. Many years later I finally managed to get a copy of some of the unique decorative door hardware with the help of John Peterson, to complete my restoration of this machine. The cabinet is indeed all my own work.