Clocker

The Clocker, manufactured by Mills Novelty Company of Chicago in September 1937, is a one-ball payout machine with a horse racing theme -- a genre that dominated the coin-op gambling trade of the late 1930s. Operating on A.C. power and giving one ball for five cents, it is a characteristic example of Mills' pre-war output.

The Clocker's mechanism is its most interesting feature. Pushing a nickel into the coin slide lights up anywhere from one to seven horses on the backglass, each corresponding to a hole on the playfield, with an average of about three selections per nickel. At the same time, an odds changer posts fresh odds for Win, Place, and Show. Landing the ball in a lit hole scores the posted odds -- but only if the player has qualified for them, which requires seven kicks for Show odds, fourteen for Place, and twenty-four for Win.

This layered system of lit selections, changing odds, and qualification thresholds gave the game a genuine racetrack-wagering flavor and added real variance to every nickel played. As an early electro-mechanical payout machine, the Clocker is an intriguing artifact of the era when pinball and gambling equipment were closely intertwined.