The real history of IGT

[badbaud]

Fortune coin made 3 card rack video slot machines. The company was owned by Stan. At that time I was working for a small company called United Audio Visual owned by Greyhound Exposition Services. We made stepper units for slide projectors that could be programmed to sequence multiple slide projectors. My lead engineer was a genius called Logan Pease who spent his earlier years designing safety controls for elevators.

When GES closed UAV we ended up working for Stan at Fortune Coin. Those old TTL slot boards were a pain to keep running and we were assigned the task of designing a video poker board.

Our first board was a complete failure. It was all TTL on a single board. The random number was generated with a noisy 2N3904. We had girls testing these transistors for their noise and mark them with some pink nail polish. The problem was if the casino had fluorescent lighting and occasional 5 ace of spades would come up on the screen. We failed the gaming test.

Then Si Redd got involved and with newer technologies Logan decided to try to make a poker game with the new Intel 8039 CPU chip. EPROMS were still in their infancy so we ended up with the new - tri voltage - 2716 for program memory. There were no EPROM programmers at that time so we built our own programmer, loaded code generated off of a Intel computer that used 8" floppy disks, manually into our homemade programmer.

The Fortune 1 was born out of these efforts. I was the eng tech that got to wirewrap the first Fortune 1 poker boards and test them.

I also hand wired the programmer we developed to program the EPROMS. Still have one in my possession and it still works.

There was a lot of competition back then and when we started developing our own reel slot machine secrecy was a must. The lab windows were blacked out and guards were posted at the doors.

Well into the reel slot development Logan got a surprise in his office from a visitor. The man held a gun to his head and told him he knew where his daughter and wife lived and if he didn't stop development of the reel slot "things" would happen to his family.

Logan immediately told Si Redd of the situation and Si sent him to Australia - everything in the lab was cleared out and all notes and schematics were locked away.

In Australia Logan met with the makers of the Aristocrat slot machine and a deal was made to allow Si Redd to sell them in the states.

There was a "name the company" contest where $500 was offered. One of the girls came up with SIRCOMA and we changed our company name. Ironically I had suggested International Gaming Technology and did not win.

2 years later SIRCOMA became IGT.

As the company grew Si hired a manager who told us in the lab one day that his wife didn't like the hot weather in Las Vegas and was moving the company to Reno. We all lost our jobs and IGT was moved to Reno.

[CaptainHappy]

What a cool story, K+ for sharing it with us! 

CaptainHappy
  ADMIN

[uniman]

A great piece of history!! Thanks for sharing. 
The only question I have is; Who was holding the gun? By that I mean who would want to stop the development of a new reel slot so much that they would threaten lives?

[badbaud]

Si's personal detective found out it was sanctioned by Bally. They were trying to get their own electronic version out the door. Another interesting story there. Bally had hired some smart engineers who were working with the Zilog Z80 chip to make their slot. Many hours were spent - many development systems and parts were bought.

One of the big-wigs at Bally had a young relative that was just finishing up a college course in electronics and he had learned on a different microprocessor - not the Z80.

He kludged together a electronic slot using this chip instead of the Z80. The E2000 series of slot was born using a MCU chip that turned out to be obsolete - from the college course training - and Bally had to purchase the company that made the MCU chip so they could go into production with the E2000 boards.

All of the Z80 engineers were fired.

[uniman]

Amazing how one Bozo can affect so many people.
Universal used the Z80 throughout their existence.

[badbaud]

Ha! some day I should tell you the Video Downs story and their road to failure.

[Op-Bell]

What an excellent piece of history! Saved in my archives. 

I was under the impression that Logan Pease came to Fortune from Gamex - was UAV a temporary stop for him along the way? Does anyone know anything about Gamex? Anyone (besides me) own a Gamex machine? Here's what I know.

Gamex was the company that produced the first stepper motor slot in 1975. Now there's a missed opportunity... Gamex wasn't a "real" slot machine company - it was an offshoot of Centronics Data Computer Corp, the printer people, because one of Centronics' senior executives had an interest on the side. They had a hard time breaking into the Nevada market against Bally. They sold a fair number of machines in Atlantic City, but then when things got a bit tough the parent company closed them down. It's too bad they didn't recognize what they'd stumbled upon and held on to the stepper patent, which reverted to the inventors, Dale Rodesch and George Johnson of Dale Electronics.

[badbaud]

Logan was working at UAV when I applied for a job, don't know how long he was there before I applied.

That can't be the same George Johnson that designed the Video Downs game for 'ol Doc Miller?

Logan and I did side work designing and building Proposition Craps machines for a small time route operator named Johnny Hussar. He lived across the street from Liberace. We would work in Johnny's garage and with the door open watch the dogs being walked.

So the truth is Logan was doing gaming designs before he started working for Fortune Coin - i wonder if he mentioned his side job on his resume.
Maybe that's why Stan gave him the job. And why Logan called me up to go back to work for him.

[Op-Bell]

That can't be the same George Johnson that designed the Video Downs game for 'ol Doc Miller?

It's a small world, isn't it? The other name I know from Dale Electronics is Dale Frey, who lives in Reno now. He was the main designer for the Dale Pokermatic and went on to design similar logic based games for Raven and Si Redd's Bally Distribution Co.