Question of the Day - 13 October 2024

Good question. And it’s true that Len Ainsworth is the father of the device in the question, the "poker machine."

Ainsworth, who turned 101 in July (not last month), is best known for founding Aristocrat, one of the world's largest gambling-machine companies, in 1953. He sold the company in 1984, then founded Ainsworth Gaming Technology. He remained an executive director until shortly after his 96th birthday.

In the 1940s, Len Ainsworth dropped out of med school in his native Australia to take over Ainsworth Consolidated Industries, a dental-equipment manufacturing company started by his father, a dentist. Ten years later, one of Ainsworth's engineers proposed retooling the machinery to produce more profitable machines.

The story goes that the engineer, one Joe Heywood, said to Ainsworth, "You know, we could build poker machines."

Ainsworth replied, "What’s a poker machine?"

Which brings us to the answer to this question, posed by Ainsworth 80 years ago and the QoD submitter last Thursday.

In the U.S., TITO- and bill-operated gambling devices are generally known as "slot machines" (historically, "one-armed bandits"). In England, they’re referred to as "fruit machines." In Scotland, they’re called "puggies." And in Ainsworth's Australia, they’re known as "poker machines" or, familiarly, "pokies."

Simple as that. "Poker machine" is Aussie for "slot machine."

The first video poker machine, the Poker-Matic, was introduced to the world in 1970 by Dale Electronics. William "Sy" Redd, a distributor for Bally Manufacturing at that time, took a shine to the machine and suggested to the higher-ups at slot-giant Bally that they get into the video poker business. As soon as the company rejected the idea as a flash in the pan, Redd patented it and founded International Game Technology, today the world's largest gaming-device manufacturer.