Question of the Day - 19 February 2024

As for gambling equipment, the first true slot machine manufacturer was Mills Novelty Company. It was founded in Chicago in 1891 and produced coin-operating machines and games -- player pianos, jukeboxes, vending machines, and slots. The slot division was picked up just after World War II by Bell-O-Matic Corporation, known mostly for manufacturing pinball machines. Both Mills and Bell-O-Matic were eclipsed by Bally Manufacturing, which in the 1960s developed the first fully electro-mechanical slot, which allowed it to rise to the top of the slot heap, beating out the other slot companies such as Ace, Buckley, and Las Vegas Coin Machine, none of which exist today.  

The first video poker machine was developed by Dale Electronics in 1970, which we believe is still in business in New York. Video poker didn't catch on at that time, but Si Redd, a distributor for Bally Gaming, picked up the idea and tried to interest Bally in it, but was unsuccessful, perhaps the biggest mistake that company ever made. So Redd started his own company, SIRCOMA, and began manufacturing the games. SIRCOMA later turned into International Game Technology, IGT, which is most assuredly still in business and is one of the leading slot, video poker, and lottery companies in the world.  

Which brings us to table games. The first roulette wheel was developed by none other than the French physicist, inventor, and mathematician Blaise Pascal in 1655; he was trying to invent a perpetual-motion machine. The game took off when it was offered in Monte Carlo in the 1840s and the wheels were made by European companies; roulette eventually made its way across the pond to the States.

In this country, B.C. Wills Co. was founded in Detroit in the late 1920s as a manufacturer of dice. In the '30s, Wills got into gambling chips, table games, and casino cabinets and furniture; we found a company catalog for sale on eBay from 1935, advertising a "complete line of quality clubroom equipment." As the Wills' product line grew, the company gained a reputation as the “Cadillac” of gaming equipment, but in the early 1950s, with the Kefauver Committee hearings on organized crime and gambling, the FBI started putting increasing pressure on shipments of gambling products and Wills moved, lock, stock, and tables, to Reno in 1955. In 1965, B.C. Wills was bought out by a company that subsequently went bankrupt. 

From there, as far as we can tell from our research, the industry entered a supply-problem period for table games. In general, California furniture companies supplied the tables themselves, while board-game manufacturers came up with the layouts. In one case, Crestline Manufacturing, a California board-game company, supplied both crap tables and layouts to Las Vegas casinos, but that was already into the late 1960s, so it was the first we found that supplied both. 

By the early 1980s, with Atlantic City increasing the market size, TCSJohnHuxley began showing up with its product. This manufacturer was founded in the United Kingdom in 1979, with table games and layouts, playing cards, chips, even casino-security systems, and Huxley is still in business today.  

As for casino supplies other than slot machines and table games, during the 1940s and 1950s, T.R. King & Company was the leading distributor of chips, playing cards, dice, and other such products. King went out of business in 2006.

Finally, it's a long story, but the son of one of the King partners started his own gaming-supply company, Paul-Son Dice and Card Company. Paul-Son was the leading distributor of supplies to Las Vegas casinos for many years; it was taken over by Gaming Partners International (GPI), which is now a principal supplier of gaming equipment to casinos around the world.