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126-437: A slot machine , fruit machine ( British English ), poker machine or pokies ( Australian English and New Zealand English ) is a gambling machine that creates a game of chance for its customers. A slot machine's standard layout features a screen displaying three or more reels that "spin" when the game is activated. Some modern slot machines still include a lever as a skeuomorphic design trait to trigger play. However,

252-565: A West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the northern Netherlands. The resident population at this time was generally speaking Common Brittonic —the insular variety of Continental Celtic , which was influenced by the Roman occupation. This group of languages ( Welsh , Cornish , Cumbric ) cohabited alongside English into

378-482: A can opener , and a spoon. The cans were maintained a constant temperature of 150 °F (65 °C). The machine was intended for use in factories or large offices, and the company claimed that it was a first of a kind in the United States. By the early 1960s, there were five major manufacturers of slot machines in the United States. The table below sets out their approximate comparative percentages of sales: By

504-405: A ccess l og or M achine e ntry a uthorization l og, depending on the jurisdiction or venue) is a log of the employee's entries into the machine. Low-level or slant-top slot machines include a stool so the player may sit down. Stand-up or upright slot machines are played while standing. Optimal play is a payback percentage based on a gambler using the optimal strategy in

630-401: A mint vending machine was declared to be a gambling device because the machine would, by internally manufactured chance, occasionally give the next user several tokens exchangeable for more candy. Despite the display of the result of the next use on the machine, the courts ruled that "[t]he machine appealed to the player's propensity to gamble, and that is [a] vice." In 1963, Bally developed

756-511: A "second screen" bonus round was Reel ’Em In, developed by WMS Industries in 1996. This type of machine had appeared in Australia from at least 1994 with the Three Bags Full game. With this type of machine, the display changes to provide a different game in which an additional payout may be awarded. Depending on the machine, the player can insert cash or, in " ticket-in, ticket-out " machines,

882-447: A "tilt". A theoretical hold worksheet is a document provided by the manufacturer for every slot machine that indicates the theoretical percentage the machine should hold based on the amount paid in. The worksheet also indicates the reel strip settings, number of coins that may be played, the payout schedule, the number of reels and other information descriptive of the particular type of slot machine. Volatility or variance refers to

1008-549: A century as Received Pronunciation (RP). However, due to language evolution and changing social trends, some linguists argue that RP is losing prestige or has been replaced by another accent, one that the linguist Geoff Lindsey for instance calls Standard Southern British English. Others suggest that more regionally-oriented standard accents are emerging in England. Even in Scotland and Northern Ireland, RP exerts little influence in

1134-438: A chromatic set of metal 'fingers'. The violin had no finger board. A small metal "finger", activated by an electromagnet, rose from under the string lifting it in a V-shaped slot thus stopping off the string. The strings were bowed by four small wheels made of discs of celluloid clamped together in a dish-shaped form. These applied just the right pressure to the strings and were driven by a variable-speed controlled motor. This and

1260-531: A different probability to every symbol on every reel. To the player, it might appear that a winning symbol was "so close", whereas in fact the probability is much lower. British English British English (abbreviations: BrE , en-GB , and BE ) is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland . More narrowly, it can refer specifically to

1386-630: A factory and administrative building, at 4100 Fullerton Avenue in the northwest of Chicago. Mills would distinguish itself by being one of only a few firms to manufacture both machines for gambling and vending machines. In 1928, Mills entered the market for coin-operated radios and multi-selection phonographs. Between 1929 and 1948, the company manufactured and sold jukeboxes by the names of Hi-Boy , Troubadour , Dancemaster , Do-Re-Me , Swing King , Zephyr , Studio , Throne of Music , Empress , Panoram (a film-playing jukebox), and Constellation . A 1935 Dancemaster jukebox may be seen and heard at

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1512-403: A finite number of spins. In other bonus rounds, the player is presented with several items on a screen from which to choose. As the player chooses items, a number of credits is revealed and awarded. Some bonuses use a mechanical device, such as a spinning wheel, that works in conjunction with the bonus to display the amount won. A candle is a light on top of the slot machine. It flashes to alert

1638-414: A fortune to his wife and eight children. The business was continued with Fred L. Mills, Herbert's first son, taking over as president while his three brothers, Ralph, Herbert, and Hayden held other top management positions. Mortimer Mills was granted United States patent 450,336 on 14 April 1891 for an improvement in "coin-actuated vending apparatus" . The improvement allowed the purchaser to select

1764-408: A gambling machine in 1891 that was a precursor to the modern slot machine. It contained five drums holding a total of 50 card faces and was based on poker . The machine proved extremely popular, and soon many bars in the city had one or more of them. Players would insert a nickel and pull a lever, which would spin the drums and the cards that they held, the player hoping for a good poker hand. There

1890-605: A glass divider between the violin mechanism and the piano mechanism. Machines with two violins are known as the De Luxe Model Violano-Virtuoso or the Double Mills . In 1914 an instrument was made especially for the Smithsonian Institution . Production seems to have finished in 1930. Henry Sandell died in 1948, aged 70. By his death he had been granted over 300 patents, many for the technology used in

2016-501: A greater movement, normally [əʊ], [əʉ] or [əɨ]. Dropping a morphological grammatical number , in collective nouns , is stronger in British English than North American English. This is to treat them as plural when once grammatically singular, a perceived natural number prevails, especially when applying to institutional nouns and groups of people. The noun 'police', for example, undergoes this treatment: Police are investigating

2142-519: A help menu, along with information on other features. Historically, all slot machines used revolving mechanical reels to display and determine results. Although the original slot machine used five reels, simpler, and therefore more reliable, three reel machines quickly became the standard. A problem with three reel machines is that the number of combinations is only cubic – the original slot machine with three physical reels and 10 symbols on each reel had only 10 = 1,000 possible combinations. This limited

2268-408: A hexagonal reel formation, and much like multi-way games, any patterns not played are darkened out of use. Denominations can range from 1 cent ("penny slots") all the way up to $ 100.00 or more per credit. The latter are typically known as "high limit" machines, and machines configured to allow for such wagers are often located in dedicated areas (which may have a separate team of attendants to cater to

2394-406: A lesser class or social status and often discounted or considered of a low intelligence. Another contribution to the standardisation of British English was the introduction of the printing press to England in the mid-15th century. In doing so, William Caxton enabled a common language and spelling to be dispersed among the entirety of England at a much faster rate. Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of

2520-408: A mute allowed the volume of sound produced to be varied. The violin produced a full tone and was able to sound 1/2 note double stops at ragtime tempi. The staccato coil allowed the bows to leave the string a fraction of a second before the 'fingers'. The violin stayed in tune by a sophisticated array of tuning arms and weights. The vibrato was produced by using an electromagnet to shake the tail-piece of

2646-496: A paper ticket with a barcode , into a designated slot on the machine. The machine is then activated by means of a lever or button (either physical or on a touchscreen), which activates reels that spin and stop to rearrange the symbols. If a player matches a winning combination of symbols, the player earns credits based on the paytable. Symbols vary depending on the theme of the machine. Classic symbols include objects such as fruits, bells, and stylized lucky sevens . Most slot games have

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2772-400: A player's chance of winning. Because of the vast number of possible wins in the original poker-based game, it proved practically impossible to make a machine capable of awarding an automatic payout for all possible winning combinations. At some time between 1887 and 1895, Charles Fey of San Francisco , California devised a much simpler automatic mechanism with three spinning reels containing

2898-648: A process called T-glottalisation . National media, being based in London, have seen the glottal stop spreading more widely than it once was in word endings, not being heard as "no [ʔ] " and bottle of water being heard as "bo [ʔ] le of wa [ʔ] er". It is still stigmatised when used at the beginning and central positions, such as later , while often has all but regained /t/ . Other consonants subject to this usage in Cockney English are p , as in pa [ʔ] er and k as in ba [ʔ] er. In most areas of England and Wales, outside

3024-511: A regional accent or dialect. However, about 2% of Britons speak with an accent called Received Pronunciation (also called "the King's English", "Oxford English" and " BBC English" ), that is essentially region-less. It derives from a mixture of the Midlands and Southern dialects spoken in London in the early modern period. It is frequently used as a model for teaching English to foreign learners. In

3150-418: A result of a short pay. Hopper fill slip is a document used to record the replenishment of the coin in the coin hopper after it becomes depleted as a result of making payouts to players. The slip indicates the amount of coin placed into the hoppers, as well as the signatures of the employees involved in the transaction, the slot machine number and the location and the date. MEAL book ( M achine e ntry

3276-490: A series of spins are automatically played at no charge at the player's current wager. Free spins are usually triggered via a scatter of at least three designated symbols (with the number of spins dependent on the number of symbols that land). Some games allow the free spins bonus to "retrigger", which adds additional spins on top of those already awarded. There is no theoretical limit to the number of free spins obtainable. Some games may have other features that can also trigger over

3402-586: A skill-based slot machine game. Payline is a line that crosses through one symbol on each reel, along which a winning combination is evaluated. Classic spinning reel machines usually have up to nine paylines, while video slot machines may have as many as one hundred. Paylines could be of various shapes (horizontal, vertical, oblique, triangular, zigzag, etc.) Persistent state refers to passive features on some slot machines, some of which able to trigger bonus payouts or other special features if certain conditions are met over time by players on that machine. Roll-up

3528-442: A table that lists the number of credits the player will receive if the symbols listed on the pay table line up on the pay line of the machine. Some symbols are wild and can represent many, or all, of the other symbols to complete a winning line. Especially on older machines, the pay table is listed on the face of the machine, usually above and below the area containing the wheels. On video slot machines, they are usually contained within

3654-449: A theme, such as a specific style , location, or character. Symbols and other bonus features of the game are typically aligned with the theme. Some themes are licensed from popular media franchises , including films, television series (including game shows such as Wheel of Fortune , which has been one of the most popular lines of slot machines overall), entertainers, and musicians. Multi-line slot machines have become more popular since

3780-415: A total of five symbols: horseshoes , diamonds , spades, hearts and a Liberty Bell ; the bell gave the machine its name. By replacing ten cards with five symbols and using three reels instead of five drums, the complexity of reading a win was considerably reduced, allowing Fey to design an effective automatic payout mechanism. Three bells in a row produced the biggest payoff, ten nickels (50¢). Liberty Bell

3906-400: Is a display of the amount of money or number of credits on the machine. On mechanical slot machines, this is usually a seven-segment display , but video slot machines typically use stylized text that suits the game's theme and user interface. The drop bucket or drop box is a container located in a slot machine's base where excess coins are diverted from the hopper. Typically, a drop bucket

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4032-429: Is a mechanical device that rotates coins into the coin tray when a player collects credits/coins (by pressing a "Cash Out" button). When a certain preset coin capacity is reached, a coin diverter automatically redirects, or "drops", excess coins into a "drop bucket" or "drop box". (Unused coin hoppers can still be found even on games that exclusively employ Ticket-In, Ticket-Out technology, as a vestige.) The credit meter

4158-725: Is also due to London-centric influences. Examples of R-dropping are car and sugar , where the R is not pronounced. British dialects differ on the extent of diphthongisation of long vowels, with southern varieties extensively turning them into diphthongs, and with northern dialects normally preserving many of them. As a comparison, North American varieties could be said to be in-between. Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are usually preserved, and in several areas also /oː/ and /eː/, as in go and say (unlike other varieties of English, that change them to [oʊ] and [eɪ] respectively). Some areas go as far as not diphthongising medieval /iː/ and /uː/, that give rise to modern /aɪ/ and /aʊ/; that is, for example, in

4284-405: Is at least one in at least three consecutive reels from left to right. Multi-way games may be configured to allow players to bet by-reel: for example, on a game with a 3x5 pattern (often referred to as a 243-way game), playing one reel allows all three symbols in the first reel to potentially pay, but only the center row pays on the remaining reels (often designated by darkening the unused portions of

4410-399: Is based on British English, but has more influence from American English , often grouped together due to their close proximity. British English, for example, is the closest English to Indian English, but Indian English has extra vocabulary and some English words are assigned different meanings. Mills Novelty Company The origins of the business lie with Mortimer Birdsul Mills, who

4536-769: Is included in style guides issued by various publishers including The Times newspaper, the Oxford University Press and the Cambridge University Press . The Oxford University Press guidelines were originally drafted as a single broadsheet page by Horace Henry Hart, and were at the time (1893) the first guide of their type in English; they were gradually expanded and eventually published, first as Hart's Rules , and in 2002 as part of The Oxford Manual of Style . Comparable in authority and stature to The Chicago Manual of Style for published American English ,

4662-495: Is still the case for those that survive. A common player piano operates pneumatically . The Violano-Virtuoso was all electric and all the moving parts were set in motion by electric motors or electromagnets . A company catalogue states that they ran on " any electric lighting current " and used " no more than one 16-candle power light. " They were designed to operate on 110 volts direct current . In locations that had 110 volts alternating current (or other types of power supply)

4788-432: Is the process of dramatizing a win by playing sounds while the meters count up to the amount that has been won. Short pay refers to a partial payout made by a slot machine, which is less than the amount due to the player. This occurs if the coin hopper has been depleted as a result of making earlier payouts to players. The remaining amount due to the player is either paid as a hand pay or an attendant will come and refill

4914-411: Is used for low-denomination slot machines and a drop box is used for high-denomination slot machines. A drop box contains a hinged lid with one or more locks whereas a drop bucket does not contain a lid. The contents of drop buckets and drop boxes are collected and counted by the casino on a scheduled basis. EGM is short for "Electronic Gaming Machine". Free spins are a common form of bonus, where

5040-537: Is very sparse and it may be that these roll numbers were never used. The Violano-Virtuoso was a heavy object. The first page of the Violano Virtuoso manual stated that to lift the instrument from the delivery wagon would need "3 good men". The Violano Virtuoso was designed for public places. The wooden cabinet in which the mechanism was housed could be oak or mahogany . In addition to the Violano-Virtuoso,

5166-530: The Chambers Dictionary , and the Collins Dictionary record actual usage rather than attempting to prescribe it. In addition, vocabulary and usage change with time; words are freely borrowed from other languages and other varieties of English, and neologisms are frequent. For historical reasons dating back to the rise of London in the ninth century, the form of language spoken in London and

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5292-617: The Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition in Seattle in 1909, including an early Violano-Virtuoso. The company used this event to promote the Violano-Virtuoso as "Designated by the U.S. Government as one of the eight greatest inventions of the decade" on all subsequent machines. The Violano-Virtuoso was not available to the public until 1911. Technology used in the instrument was patented on 4 June 1912, under United States patents 1,028,495 and 1,028,496. Early Violan-Virtuoso's have

5418-637: The East Midlands became standard English within the Court, and ultimately became the basis for generally accepted use in the law, government, literature and education in Britain. The standardisation of British English is thought to be from both dialect levelling and a thought of social superiority. Speaking in the Standard dialect created class distinctions; those who did not speak the standard English would be considered of

5544-509: The English language in England , or, more broadly, to the collective dialects of English throughout the British Isles taken as a single umbrella variety, for instance additionally incorporating Scottish English , Welsh English , and Northern Irish English . Tom McArthur in the Oxford Guide to World English acknowledges that British English shares "all the ambiguities and tensions [with]

5670-649: The Las Vegas Hilton Hotel . After some modifications to defeat cheating attempts, the video slot machine was approved by the Nevada State Gaming Commission and eventually found popularity on the Las Vegas Strip and in downtown casinos. Fortune Coin Co. and its video slot-machine technology were purchased by IGT (International Gaming Technology) in 1978. The first American video slot machine to offer

5796-510: The Musical Museum , Brentford, England. By May 1935, the company was run by the four sons of Herbert Stephen Mills: Fred L. Mills was President, Ralph J. Mills was Vice President in Charge of Sales, Herbert S. Mills Jr. was Treasurer and manager of the plant, and Hayden Mills was Secretary. The family's wealth included a private yacht named Minoco , after the family firm. In about 1935, Mills

5922-484: The Royal Spanish Academy with Spanish. Standard British English differs notably in certain vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation features from standard American English and certain other standard English varieties around the world. British and American spelling also differ in minor ways. The accent, or pronunciation system, of standard British English, based in southeastern England, has been known for over

6048-486: The Scots language or Scottish Gaelic ). Each group includes a range of dialects, some markedly different from others. The various British dialects also differ in the words that they have borrowed from other languages. Around the middle of the 15th century, there were points where within the 5 major dialects there were almost 500 ways to spell the word though . Following its last major survey of English Dialects (1949–1950),

6174-560: The University of Leeds has started work on a new project. In May 2007 the Arts and Humanities Research Council awarded a grant to Leeds to study British regional dialects. The team are sifting through a large collection of examples of regional slang words and phrases turned up by the "Voices project" run by the BBC , in which they invited the public to send in examples of English still spoken throughout

6300-601: The West Country and other near-by counties of the UK, the consonant R is not pronounced if not followed by a vowel, lengthening the preceding vowel instead. This phenomenon is known as non-rhoticity . In these same areas, a tendency exists to insert an R between a word ending in a vowel and a next word beginning with a vowel. This is called the intrusive R . It could be understood as a merger, in that words that once ended in an R and words that did not are no longer treated differently. This

6426-439: The 1990s. These machines have more than one payline, meaning that visible symbols that are not aligned on the main horizontal may be considered as winning combinations. Traditional three-reel slot machines commonly have one, three, or five paylines while video slot machines may have 9, 15, 25, or as many as 1024 different paylines. Most accept variable numbers of credits to play, with 1 to 15 credits per line being typical. The higher

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6552-603: The 21st century. RP, while long established as the standard English accent around the globe due to the spread of the British Empire , is distinct from the standard English pronunciation in some parts of the world; most prominently, RP notably contrasts with standard North American accents. In the 21st century, dictionaries like the Oxford English Dictionary , the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English ,

6678-816: The English Language (1755) was a large step in the English-language spelling reform , where the purification of language focused on standardising both speech and spelling. By the early 20th century, British authors had produced numerous books intended as guides to English grammar and usage, a few of which achieved sufficient acclaim to have remained in print for long periods and to have been reissued in new editions after some decades. These include, most notably of all, Fowler's Modern English Usage and The Complete Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers . Detailed guidance on many aspects of writing British English for publication

6804-644: The Germanic schwein ) is the animal in the field bred by the occupied Anglo-Saxons and pork (like the French porc ) is the animal at the table eaten by the occupying Normans. Another example is the Anglo-Saxon cu meaning cow, and the French bœuf meaning beef. Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of the Anglo-Frisian core of English;

6930-700: The Mills Violano Virtuoso . The registered owner of United States trade marks 78625380 (the Mills Novelty Co. prize ribbon) and 78625372 (the Violano Virtuoso Self-Playing Violin and Piano laurel wreath, lyre, banner and ribbons) is Robert W. Brown of Wisconsin . The main inventor of the Mills Violano-Virtuoso was Henry Konrad Sandell, a contemporary of Thomas Edison , who was born in about 1878. Henry Sandell arrived in

7056-518: The Mills Novelty Company to Mills Industries, Incorporated on September 1, 1943 to better reflect their wider manufacturing output initiated by the United States entry into World War II. In 1944, Mills representative D. W. Donahue was appointed to a planning committee of the coin machine manufacturing industry which would explore the transition of the former coin-operated machine factories from wartime manufacturing to their prior business. Before

7182-588: The Mills company introduced Soundies , short 16mm musical films played in a coin-operated movie jukebox, its projection and sound mechanism made by RCA. Wartime restrictions curtailed manufacturing of the jukeboxes, but the Mills company continued to produce and distribute new films for them into 1947. During World War II, Mills received authorized federal funding to use its industrial facilities to produce bomb carriers, directional antenna, hand control slip rings, and poppet valves. The company changed its corporate name from

7308-520: The Nevada State Museum's Fey Collection. The first Liberty Bell machines produced by Mills used the same symbols on the reels as did Charles Fey's original. Soon afterward, another version was produced with patriotic symbols, such as flags and wreaths , on the wheels. Later, a similar machine called the Operator's Bell was produced that included the option of adding a gum -vending attachment. As

7434-891: The Oxford Manual is a fairly exhaustive standard for published British English that writers can turn to in the absence of specific guidance from their publishing house. British English is the basis of, and very similar to, Commonwealth English . Commonwealth English is English as spoken and written in the Commonwealth countries , though often with some local variation. This includes English spoken in Australia , Malta , New Zealand , Nigeria , and South Africa . It also includes South Asian English used in South Asia, in English varieties in Southeast Asia , and in parts of Africa. Canadian English

7560-701: The South East, there are significantly different accents; the Cockney accent spoken by some East Londoners is strikingly different from Received Pronunciation (RP). Cockney rhyming slang can be (and was initially intended to be) difficult for outsiders to understand, although the extent of its use is often somewhat exaggerated. Londoners speak with a mixture of accents, depending on ethnicity, neighbourhood, class, age, upbringing, and sundry other factors. Estuary English has been gaining prominence in recent decades: it has some features of RP and some of Cockney. Immigrants to

7686-537: The UK in recent decades have brought many more languages to the country and particularly to London. Surveys started in 1979 by the Inner London Education Authority discovered over 125 languages being spoken domestically by the families of the inner city's schoolchildren. Notably Multicultural London English , a sociolect that emerged in the late 20th century spoken mainly by young, working-class people in multicultural parts of London . Since

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7812-621: The United Kingdom , as well as within the countries themselves. The major divisions are normally classified as English English (or English as spoken in England (which is itself broadly grouped into Southern English , West Country , East and West Midlands English and Northern English ), Northern Irish English (in Northern Ireland), Welsh English (not to be confused with the Welsh language ), and Scottish English (not to be confused with

7938-488: The United States from Sweden at the age of about 10 in about 1888. He was granted his first United States patent on the mechanism at the age of 21, in about 1899 and put his proposals and patents before the Mills Novelty Company in about 1903. On 27 March 1905 Henry Sandell filed an application for a United States patent for an electric self playing violin . The patent was granted, as number 807,871, on 19 December 1905 and assigned to Mills Novelty Company. This forerunner of

8064-524: The Violano-Virtuoso was known as the Automatic Virtuosa . It was marketed in 1905. At the time player pianos and mechanical coin-operated devices were extremely popular. Subsequently, a piano mechanism was added to the violin mechanism, and the combination came to known as the Violano-Virtuoso . The United States Patent and Trademark Office had a display of several significant inventions at

8190-525: The Violano-Virtuoso. The exact number of machines produced is not known. Estimates are between 4,000 and 5,000. Today, some sources estimate that only about 750 of the single machines and fewer than 100 of the Double Mills still exist, while other sources estimate that several thousand machines survive. However, the Violano-Virtuoso have the highest survival rate of any type of player piano; they required little maintenance when they were first produced and that

8316-458: The West Scottish accent. Phonological features characteristic of British English revolve around the pronunciation of the letter R, as well as the dental plosive T and some diphthongs specific to this dialect. Once regarded as a Cockney feature, in a number of forms of spoken British English, /t/ has become commonly realised as a glottal stop [ʔ] when it is in the intervocalic position, in

8442-410: The adjective little is predominant elsewhere. Nevertheless, there is a meaningful degree of uniformity in written English within the United Kingdom, and this could be described by the term British English . The forms of spoken English, however, vary considerably more than in most other areas of the world where English is spoken and so a uniform concept of British English is more difficult to apply to

8568-472: The age of 14 to work for Mills. He would later establish a separate company, Bert E. Mills Corporation, and, in 1946, help to develop the first vending machines to sell hot coffee. In 1907, Herbert S. Mills collaborated with Charles Fey , the inventor of the slot machine, to produce the Mills Liberty Bell . In 1926, the company had moved to a plant of 375,000 square feet (34,800 m ), comprising

8694-402: The amount bet, the higher the payout will be if the player wins. One of the main differences between video slot machines and reel machines is in the way payouts are calculated. With reel machines, the only way to win the maximum jackpot is to play the maximum number of coins (usually three, sometimes four or even five coins per spin). With video machines, the fixed payout values are multiplied by

8820-481: The award of the grant in 2007, Leeds University stated: that they were "very pleased"—and indeed, "well chuffed"—at receiving their generous grant. He could, of course, have been "bostin" if he had come from the Black Country , or if he was a Scouser he would have been well "made up" over so many spondoolicks, because as a Geordie might say, £460,000 is a "canny load of chink". Most people in Britain speak with

8946-411: The centre. This arrangement distributed the string pressure more evenly across the frame and helped keep the piano in tune. The Violano-Virtuoso was coin-operated and its mechanism was capable of holding up to 15 coins. Some models were made for domestic use and did not have the coin mechanism. The instrument used rolls of perforated paper. Most of the rolls had five tunes on them, the popular tunes of

9072-546: The change was that the market for the products of the Coin Machine Department and the markets for the other products of Mills were quite distinct. The last jukebox produced by the Mills Novelty Company was the Constellation (model number 951). By some mechanism, it appears that the front grille medallion from the jukebox ended up being incorporated in the 1948 Tucker Sedan , as a horn button. By January 1948,

9198-515: The company had added a coin-operated coffee vending machine , a three-flavor beverage bottle vendor, a citrus fruit juice vendor, and an ice cream package vendor to its product line. The intention of F. L. Jacobs Company was to operate Mills Industries as an independent subsidiary. However, component parts for the equipment were to be produced in the factories of F. L. Jacobs in Detroit , Traverse City, Michigan and Danville, Illinois . By September 1954,

9324-457: The company launched the Mills Owl , which was the first mechanical upright cabinet slot machine. The machine's design included a circle of owls perched on a lithographed tin wheel. The machine was a great success and the company would later adopt an owl motif as its trade mark. In 1898 [1] , Mortimer Mills sold a controlling interest in the company to his son, Herbert S. Mills, and the name of

9450-505: The company was changed from M.B.M. Cigar Vending Company to Mills Novelty Company, Incorporated. At that time, the company was located at 125-127 West Randolph Street, Chicago. In 1904, Mills Novelty Company was an exhibitor at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition , the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair . Its pavilion was run by Ode D. Jennings , who would later establish a competitor to Mills. In 1906, Bert Mills left school at

9576-878: The company was financially troubled and had petitioned the federal court for time to pay its debts. In December 1948, the company sold all of its phonography inventory to H. C. Evans of Chicago. By the end of the 1940s, the Chairman of the Board of Mills was Ralph J. Mills and the President was Herbert S. Mills. Both men were Vice Presidents of Bell-O-Matic Corporation, whose officers included President V. C. Shay and Vice President in Charge of Advertising Grant F. Shay. Both companies were still located at building in Fullerton Avenue, Chicago. The Bell-O-Matic Corporation would later relocate to 135 Linden Street, Reno, Nevada . In January 1951 it

9702-480: The controller of Mills Industries was James A. Pound. In November 1955, Mills Industries announced a project to consolidate, over a number of years, most of its operations in Traverse City, Michigan. In November 1955, Mills Industries, Inc. announced a coin-operated vending machine, developed jointly with H. J. Heinz Company , that would dispense a tin can of hot food (one of a selection of six soups or dinners),

9828-488: The country. In October 1954, F. L. Jacobs Company, a manufacturer of automobile parts based in Detroit , announced that it had acquired both Mills Industries, Inc. and Selmix Dispensers, Inc. of Long Island City, Queens (another manufacturer of equipment in the vending and dispensing industries). At that time the main products of Mills Industries were commercial ice cream freezers, frozen custard and milk shake machines and all types of vending machines. During 1953 and 1954,

9954-613: The country. The BBC Voices project also collected hundreds of news articles about how the British speak English from swearing through to items on language schools. This information will also be collated and analysed by Johnson's team both for content and for where it was reported. "Perhaps the most remarkable finding in the Voices study is that the English language is as diverse as ever, despite our increased mobility and constant exposure to other accents and dialects through TV and radio". When discussing

10080-412: The course of free spins. A hand pay refers to a payout made by an attendant or at an exchange point ("cage"), rather than by the slot machine itself. A hand pay occurs when the amount of the payout exceeds the maximum amount that was preset by the slot machine's operator. Usually, the maximum amount is set at the level where the operator must begin to deduct taxes. A hand pay could also be necessary as

10206-523: The day. Individual tunes could not be selected. Over time, the Mills Novelty Company produced approximately 3,121 different rolls. Each arrangement of a song was identified by a unique number. Some songs appear on more than one rolls. Attempts have been made to produce a complete "rollography" for the Violano-Virtuoso. A list has been produced that covers more than half of the different rolls that were ever produced. Rolls 1 to about 1000 and 1800 to 2500 are well documented. Information between rolls 1000 and 1800

10332-526: The early 1960s, the Bell-O-Matic Corporation was being run by Tony Mills. He sold the company to American Machine and Science, Inc. (AMSC) owned by Wallace E. Carroll (later the chairman of Katy Industries ), reportedly for USD500,000. AMSC had also acquired O. D. Jennings & Company and the two companies were merged to form TJM Corporation . AMSC would later merge with CRL Industries , Inc. (subsequently renamed CRL Inc.). TJM Corporation

10458-446: The end of the year though, the President of the organization Fred L Mills died of a stomach ailment at age 49 in St. Charles, Illinois . On 1 April 1946, Bell-O-Matic Corporation was established as the exclusive distributor worldwide of all Bells and related products manufactured by Mills, and employed all of the former personnel of the Coin Machine Department of Mills. The stated rationale for

10584-423: The first fully electromechanical slot machine called Money Honey (although earlier machines such as Bally's High Hand draw-poker machine had exhibited the basics of electromechanical construction as early as 1940). Its electromechanical workings made Money Honey the first slot machine with a bottomless hopper and automatic payout of up to 500 coins without the help of an attendant. The popularity of this machine led to

10710-399: The game (similarly to a joker card), usually excluding scatter and jackpot symbols (or offering a lower prize on non-natural combinations that include wilds). How jokers behave are dependent on the specific game and whether the player is in a bonus or free games mode. Sometimes wild symbols may only appear on certain reels, or have a chance to "stack" across the entire reel. Each machine has

10836-460: The gum offered was fruit-flavored, fruit symbols were placed on the reels: lemons , cherries , oranges and plums . A bell was retained, and a picture of a stick of Bell-Fruit Gum, the origin of the bar symbol, was also present. This set of symbols proved highly popular and was used by other companies that began to make their own slot machines: Caille , Watling, Jennings and Pace. A commonly used technique to avoid gambling laws in several states

10962-453: The idea of two different morphemes, one that causes the double negation, and one that is used for the point or the verb. Standard English in the United Kingdom, as in other English-speaking nations, is widely enforced in schools and by social norms for formal contexts but not by any singular authority; for instance, there is no institution equivalent to the Académie française with French or

11088-610: The increasing predominance of electronic games , with the side lever soon becoming vestigial. The first video slot machine was developed in 1976 in Kearny Mesa, California by the Las Vegas–based Fortune Coin Co. This machine used a modified 19-inch (48 cm) Sony Trinitron color receiver for the display and logic boards for all slot-machine functions. The prototype was mounted in a full-size, show-ready slot-machine cabinet. The first production units went on trial at

11214-406: The instruments were used with a unique converter unit. The violin had four strings, with an octave available on each string, and could reproduce 64 notes. All four strings could be played simultaneously. This allowed the possibility of four-part independent counterpoint . A vibrato could be produced. The strings were played by small electric powered rollers, which were self-rosinating , and

11340-511: The last southern Midlands accent to use the broad "a" in words like bath or grass (i.e. barth or grarss ). Conversely crass or plastic use a slender "a". A few miles northwest in Leicestershire the slender "a" becomes more widespread generally. In the town of Corby , five miles (8 km) north, one can find Corbyite which, unlike the Kettering accent, is largely influenced by

11466-508: The later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core of a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance branch of the European languages. This Norman influence entered English largely through the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a "borrowing" language of great flexibility and with a huge vocabulary . Dialects and accents vary amongst the four countries of

11592-451: The machine for inserting and retrieving coins. "Fruit machine" comes from the traditional fruit images on the spinning reels such as lemons and cherries. Slot machines are also known pejoratively as "one-armed bandits", alluding to the large mechanical levers affixed to the sides of early mechanical machines, and to the games' ability to empty players' pockets and wallets as thieves would. Sittman and Pitt of Brooklyn , New York , developed

11718-410: The machine. A scatter is a pay combination based on occurrences of a designated symbol landing anywhere on the reels, rather than falling in sequence on the same payline. A scatter pay usually requires a minimum of three symbols to land, and the machine may offer increased prizes or jackpots depending on the number that land. Scatters are frequently used to trigger bonus games, such as free spins (with

11844-440: The manufacturer's ability to offer large jackpots since even the rarest event had a likelihood of 0.1%. The maximum theoretical payout, assuming 100% return to player would be 1000 times the bet, but that would leave no room for other pays, making the machine very high risk, and also quite boring. Although the number of symbols eventually increased to about 22, allowing 10,648 combinations, this still limited jackpot sizes as well as

11970-452: The mass internal migration to Northamptonshire in the 1940s and given its position between several major accent regions, it has become a source of various accent developments. In Northampton the older accent has been influenced by overspill Londoners. There is an accent known locally as the Kettering accent, which is a transitional accent between the East Midlands and East Anglian . It is

12096-455: The measure of risk associated with playing a slot machine. A low-volatility slot machine has regular but smaller wins, while a high-variance slot machine has fewer but bigger wins. Weight count is an American term referring to the total value of coins or tokens removed from a slot machine's drop bucket or drop box for counting by the casino's hard count team through the use of a weigh scale. Wild symbols substitute for most other symbols in

12222-415: The mechanical operations of early machines have been superseded by random number generators , and most are now operated using buttons and touchscreens . Slot machines include one or more currency detectors that validate the form of payment, whether coin , banknote , voucher , or token . The machine pays out according to the pattern of symbols displayed when the reels stop "spinning". Slot machines are

12348-412: The minimum out over the course of several pulls. Tilt is a term derived from electromechanical slot machines' " tilt switches ", which would make or break a circuit when they were tilted or otherwise tampered with that triggered an alarm. While modern machines no longer have tilt switches, any kind of technical fault (door switch in the wrong state, reel motor failure, out of paper, etc.) is still called

12474-458: The modern period, but due to their remoteness from the Germanic languages , influence on English was notably limited . However, the degree of influence remains debated, and it has recently been argued that its grammatical influence accounts for the substantial innovations noted between English and the other West Germanic languages. Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting

12600-411: The most popular gambling method in casinos and contribute about 70% of the average U.S. casino's income. Digital technology has resulted in variations in the original slot machine concept. As the player is essentially playing a video game , manufacturers can offer more interactive elements, such as advanced bonus rounds and more varied video graphics. The "slot machine" term derives from the slots on

12726-466: The multiple reel. In 1984, Inge Telnaes received a patent for a device titled, "Electronic Gaming Device Utilizing a Random Number Generator for Selecting the Reel Stop Positions" (US Patent 4448419), which states: "It is important to make a machine that is perceived to present greater chances of payoff than it actually has within the legal limitations that games of chance must operate." The patent

12852-406: The needs of those who play there). The machine automatically calculates the number of credits the player receives in exchange for the cash inserted. Newer machines often allow players to choose from a selection of denominations on a splash screen or menu. A bonus is a special feature of the particular game theme, which is activated when certain symbols appear in a winning combination. Bonuses and

12978-497: The number of bonus features vary depending upon the game. Some bonus rounds are a special session of free spins (the number of which is often based on the winning combination that triggers the bonus), often with a different or modified set of winning combinations as the main game and/or other multipliers or increased frequencies of symbols, or a "hold and re-spin" mechanic in which specific symbols (usually marked with values of credits or other prizes) are collected and locked in place over

13104-456: The number of coins per line that is being bet. In other words: on a reel machine, the odds are more favorable if the gambler plays with the maximum number of coins available. However, depending on the structure of the game and its bonus features, some video slots may still include features that improve chances at payouts by making increased wagers. "Multi-way" games eschew fixed paylines in favor of allowing symbols to pay anywhere, as long as there

13230-421: The number of possible outcomes. In the 1980s, however, slot machine manufacturers incorporated electronics into their products and programmed them to weight particular symbols. Thus the odds of losing symbols appearing on the payline became disproportionate to their actual frequency on the physical reel. A symbol would only appear once on the reel displayed to the player, but could, in fact, occupy several stops on

13356-455: The number of spins multiplying based on the number of scatter symbols that land). The scatter symbol usually cannot be matched using wilds, and some games may require the scatter symbols to appear on consecutive reels in order to pay. On some multiway games, scatter symbols still pay in unused areas. Taste is a reference to the small amount often paid out to keep a player seated and continuously betting. Only rarely will machines fail to pay even

13482-412: The operator that change is needed, hand pay is requested, a potential problem with the machine or the progressive jackpot has been won. It can be lit by the player by pressing the "service" or "help" button. Carousel refers to a grouping of slot machines, usually in a circle or oval formation. A coin hopper is a container where the coins that are immediately available for payouts are held. The hopper

13608-415: The product being sold and manipulate it so that it was carried to the point of delivery. Focusing on the devices covered by the patent, Mortimer Mills founded the M.B.M. Cigar Vending Company sometime between 1891, and 1895. Over half a century later, the company would promote itself as having been founded in 1889, two years before the date of the patent, and by H.S. Mills rather than his father. In 1897,

13734-415: The reels). Other multi-way games use a 4x5 or 5x5 pattern, where there are up to five symbols in each reel, allowing for up to 1,024 and 3,125 ways to win respectively. The Australian manufacturer Aristocrat brands games featuring this system as "Reel Power", "Xtra Reel Power" and "Super Reel Power" respectively. A variation involves patterns where symbols are adjacent to one another. Most of these games have

13860-401: The spoken language. Globally, countries that are former British colonies or members of the Commonwealth tend to follow British English, as is the case for English used by European Union institutions. In China, both British English and American English are taught. The UK government actively teaches and promotes English around the world and operates in over 200 countries . English is

13986-587: The theft of work tools worth £500 from a van at the Sprucefield park and ride car park in Lisburn. A football team can be treated likewise: Arsenal have lost just one of 20 home Premier League matches against Manchester City. This tendency can be observed in texts produced already in the 19th century. For example, Jane Austen , a British author, writes in Chapter 4 of Pride and Prejudice , published in 1813: All

14112-403: The traditional accent of Newcastle upon Tyne , 'out' will sound as 'oot', and in parts of Scotland and North-West England, 'my' will be pronounced as 'me'. Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are diphthongised to [ɪi] and [ʊu] respectively (or, more technically, [ʏʉ], with a raised tongue), so that ee and oo in feed and food are pronounced with a movement. The diphthong [oʊ] is also pronounced with

14238-733: The varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England. One of these dialects, Late West Saxon , eventually came to dominate. The original Old English was then influenced by two waves of invasion: the first was by speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family, who settled in parts of Britain in the eighth and ninth centuries; the second was the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and ultimately developed an English variety of this called Anglo-Norman . These two invasions caused English to become "mixed" to some degree (though it

14364-399: The violin. The piano had 44 notes, half the number of keys found on a normal piano keyboard. It was played by regular hammers using a standard player piano action. The hammers were activated by electromagnets. The piano frame was made of iron, shaped like a shield, and symmetrically strung. The bass strings were at the centre of the frame and the treble strings radiated out to the edges from

14490-402: The word 'British' and as a result can be used and interpreted in two ways, more broadly or more narrowly, within a range of blurring and ambiguity". Variations exist in formal (both written and spoken) English in the United Kingdom. For example, the adjective wee is almost exclusively used in parts of Scotland, north-east England, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and occasionally Yorkshire , whereas

14616-560: The world are good and agreeable in your eyes. However, in Chapter 16, the grammatical number is used. The world is blinded by his fortune and consequence. Some dialects of British English use negative concords, also known as double negatives . Rather than changing a word or using a positive, words like nobody, not, nothing, and never would be used in the same sentence. While this does not occur in Standard English, it does occur in non-standard dialects. The double negation follows

14742-610: Was a huge success and spawned a thriving mechanical gaming device industry. After a few years, the devices were banned in California, but Fey still could not keep up with the demand for them elsewhere. The Liberty Bell machine was so popular that it was copied by many slot machine manufacturers. The first of these, also called the "Liberty Bell", was produced by the manufacturer Herbert Mills in 1907. By 1908, "bell" machines had been installed in cigar stores, brothels and barber shops. Early machines, including an 1899 Liberty Bell, are now part of

14868-512: Was born in 1845 in Canada West (today's Ontario , Canada) but who later became a citizen of the United States, resident in Chicago, Illinois . Mortimer Mills would have 13 children. One son, Herbert Stephen Mills, was born in 1872 when his father was about 27. In 1892, Bert E. Mills, the youngest of Mortimer Mill's children was born. In about 1895, Fred L. Mills, the first of Herbert Mills' sons,

14994-505: Was born. Ralph J. Mills, Herbert's second son, was born in July 1898. In about 1900, Herbert Mills, the third son of Herbert Stephen Mills was born. His younger brother, Hayden ("Bill") Mills, was born two years later in about 1902. The Mills brothers were raised in Oak Park, Illinois , and continued to live in that area until at least the mid-1930s. In 1929, Herbert Mills had died aged 57, leaving

15120-428: Was engaged by Coca-Cola to produce a standing dry automatic cooled vendor for bottles. The result, the model 47, was the first of its kind for Cola-Cola. By the late 1930s, gum vending machines were being installed by Mills Automatic Merchandising Corporation of New York . The machines made use of technology protected by United States patents assigned to Mills Novelty Company, including number 1,869,616. In 1940,

15246-452: Was later bought by International Game Technology and has since expired. A virtual reel that has 256 virtual stops per reel would allow up to 256 = 16,777,216 final positions. The manufacturer could choose to offer a $ 1 million jackpot on a $ 1 bet, confident that it will only happen, over the long term, once every 16.8 million plays. With microprocessors now ubiquitous, the computers inside modern slot machines allow manufacturers to assign

15372-422: Was never a truly mixed language in the strictest sense of the word; mixed languages arise from the cohabitation of speakers of different languages, who develop a hybrid tongue for basic communication). The more idiomatic, concrete and descriptive English is, the more it is from Anglo-Saxon origins. The more intellectual and abstract English is, the more it contains Latin and French influences, e.g. swine (like

15498-451: Was no direct payout mechanism, so a pair of kings might get the player a free beer, whereas a royal flush could pay out cigars or drinks; the prizes were wholly dependent upon what the establishment would offer. To improve the odds for the house, two cards were typically removed from the deck , the ten of spades and the jack of hearts , doubling the odds against winning a royal flush. The drums could also be rearranged to further reduce

15624-460: Was reported that the industry manufacturing slot machines in the United States, then almost entirely based in Chicago, had suffered a major blow. A bill had been signed which banned slot machines from federal property and prohibited their shipment in commerce between states. At that time slot machines were allowed only in the states of Nevada , Montana and Maryland (where they were allowed in only four counties) but were operated illegally throughout

15750-461: Was run by Tony Mills and his brother John Mills. The merged company failed to compete successfully with the electro/mechanical models produced by Bally and also suffered because it had not protected its intellectual property rights in Japan. The company ceased trading in the 1980s. The name "The Mills Novelty Company" still survives today, in the form of a business that installs digital player systems in

15876-410: Was to award food prizes. For this reason, several gumball and other vending machines were regarded with mistrust by the courts. The two Iowa cases of State v. Ellis and State v. Striggles are both used in criminal law classes to illustrate the concept of reliance upon authority as it relates to the axiomatic ignorantia juris non excusat ("ignorance of the law is no excuse"). In these cases,

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