![]() German mechanics in San Francisco invented the first slots in the early 1870s, but it wasn’t until the turn of the century that the Liberty Bell machine set the standard, with its three reels of spinning lucky charms: bells, horseshoes, hearts.Īlthough slots gained popularity during Prohibition, their conquest of casino floors was slow. When Carmichael was arrested in 1985, slots had come a long way from their nickel-plated, side-handled origins. ![]() Once he was out, Tommy vowed to reinvent himself as the slot machine wizard of Las Vegas. He was arrested, convicted, and sent to the penitentiary.īut he wasn’t scared straight. After a few years of success with the top-bottom joint, Carmichael was playing slots at a Denny’s near the Strip when police slammed him against the wall and discovered the device. That dream fell apart on Independence Day, 1985. “You are thinking you are going to have yachts and cars,” he later told the Associated Press. After his first attempt, he walked off with about thirty-five bucks in nickels-chump change compared to what would come, but enough to confirm that he was onto something big. Sensing his destiny, Carmichael closed his repair shop and moved to Las Vegas, eager to put the top-bottom joint to work. When inserted into the coin slot, it completed a circuit powerful enough to hot-wire the hopper, where the coins are kept. ![]() The “top” part was a piece of metal curved like the number nine. It went into the left corner of the machine, up against the circuitboard, and sent low-wattage electricity coursing through the unit. A piece of guitar string comprised the “bottom” part of the tool. Triggering a payout with a top-bottom joint was a crude operation. Of how his multi-million-dollar criminal enterprise got started that day, Carmichael simply said, “We got to playing around.” He had minor drug convictions and some juvenile mischief on his criminal record, but nothing about the thirty-year-old suggested that he’d one day stand among the most inventive cheats in gambling history.Ĭarmichael’s friend had brought along some toys to tinker with: a Bally’s slot machine and a cheating device called the top-bottom joint. When a friend dropped by Ace TV Sales and Service in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1980, Tommy Glenn Carmichael was just an unremarkable repairman who moonlighted as a pool hustler. “I woke up,” he told the History Channel, “actually got out of bed, and went and built it.” Tommy had found his answer: The Monkey Paw. Then, in the recess of sleep, the solution appeared in all its brilliant simplicity: a flexible piece of metal, wedged at the top, and some piano wire. But no matter what he tried, some riddle in the guts of the unit would thwart him. Night and day in his Vegas apartment, he toiled on a Fortune One video poker machine. He needed a new tool, something to replace the clumsy old instrument that had landed him in the penitentiary. “I’m seeing myself from behind,” he recalled, “and I have in my hand.” All through 1990, he’d been searching for a way to cheat the latest slot machines.
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