Place de la Musique - home of mechanical marvels

Check out this news story about a massive collection of music machines, arcade games, and other mechanical marvels.

From The Sanfilippo Foundation web site:

The Sanfilippo "Place de la Musique" is known worldwide for its magnificent collections of beautifully restored antique music machines, phonographs, arcade and gambling machines, chandeliers, art glass, the world's largest restored theatre pipe organ, the most spectacular European salon carousel in existence, street and tower clocks, steam engines and other functional mechanical antiques, displayed within a breathtaking French Second Empire setting.

Learn more at The Sanfilippo Foundation web site.

[ Thanks Joe! ]

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Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum

Marvin Yagoda has been collecting vintage coin-operated machines since 1960. Open since 1990, his little museum is located a shopping mall north of Detroit in Farmington Hills, Michigan. The interior is filled with historical and modern arcade machines, sideshow wonders, fortune tellers, automata, and curiosities.

Here is the web site for Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum.

[ Thanks Shel! ]

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Mechanisms from The Sands Mechanical Museum

The Sands Mechanical Museum -- restorers of coin operated arcade machines -- contains coin-operated games, pinball machines, horse race games, arcade video games, and shooting games.

They mean it when they say "those things hidden from the player are almost as fascinating as the things visible. The motors, gears, electrical wiring, and gadgets have an appeal all their own."

Indeed, they offer an extensive section called Mechanisms Explained in which they have documented, photographed, animated, and described how a wide range of arcade machine mechanisms work. They offer mechanism explanations for the following:

• Ball bearing baseball "runners"
• Bingo display screen (mechanical)
• Various coin payout devices
• Coin counter units
• Coin rejector workings
• Coin slide mechanisms
• Credit recording unit
• Gear box based hunting game
• Photo booth camera with Geneva mechanism
• An early score keeping unit

The Sands Mechanical Museum is an extremely well documented online mechanical reference source.

Thanks bhaaluu!

Deluxe Arcade Style Animatronic Fortune Teller

Zoltar is an animatronic fortune teller housed in a wheeled cabinet made of oak with birch veneers, painted trim, and three panes of tempered glass.

The full-size figure bust is detailed with a handlebar mustache and beard, a gold head wrap, gold shirt, paisley vest, and jewelry.

When you to approach him, Zoltar acknowledges your presence. Once you insert a quarter, Zoltar nods his head up and down, his crystal ball lights up, and he sweeps his hand back and forth.

Zoltar then delivers one of 16 different spoken fortunes and dispenses one of 23 different printed fortunes in the form of a paper card dispensed from the front of the cabinet.

Check out Zoltar the Animatronic Fortune Teller at Hammacher Schlemmer.