SLOT MACHINES POPULAR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21774, 13 October 1932, Page 13

SLOT MACHINES POPULAR

£250,000 SPENT IN A YEAR. t Two hundred million pennies were used in slot machines in Great Britain last year. Britain is “ penny-in-the-slot conscious.’' One British company alone has nearly doubled the number' of its machines in the last four years, and now has 52,000. Nearly a quarter of those are weighing machines. The people, of Britain spend about £250,000 every year on weighing themselves. Men are employed whose wholetime job is to go round weighing themselves to test the machines. In the, morning the man takes his weight on an accurate machine at headquarters. Then he makes a tour of the neighing machines, comparing them. Most popular of all machines are the ones that tell fortunes. These tiny slips, oj cardboard, with their warning about dark men and promises of wedded bliss and babies, come from Hull, They are put into the machines in prosaic bundles of 10.

Behind the apparently simple and «b vious business of penny-in-the-slot machines are men who are keen students of psychology. They know that a machine placed in one position may make only a few shillings per week. Placed only a, few yards away it may make £lO. They have, learned, top, that a coat of paint, of. a different colour or a; touch of chromium may make a difference of pounds to a machine’s earning capacity.