For Amusement Only: Slot Machines and Other Gambling Devices of the Mechanical Age See all the exhibitions.

For Amusement Only traces the development of slot machines, trade stimulators, and other gambling devices from their nineteenth-century origins to the prohibition of slot-machine gambling in the early 1950s. More than ninety examples illustrate a range of clever devices intended to entertain business patrons while separating them from their coins--wooden upright roulette and slot machines with intricately carved cabinets; finely detailed, cast-iron card-flippers and dice-tossers; and colorful punchboards illustrated with enticing words and images.