clubconsoles wrote:Many thanks for your informed post marsonion.
it would appear that Harry E. Knupp was the inventor behind the patents for those machines.
However, I read in one of Dick Bueschels books that for the 1934 Dictator (first machine built under fuller-johnsom management), an industrial stylist by the name of George Walker was brought in.
I would suggest he may be responsible for the moderne triangular design to which you refer to?
I had to google the word "contemporaneous" lol
I have never heard that word being used in the UK and thought it was a term only used your side of the pond.
I stand corrected, definition below-
"contemporaneous
kənˌtɛmpəˈreɪnɪəs,kɒnˌtɛmpəˈreɪnɪəs/
adjective
adjective: contemporaneous
existing at or occurring in the same period of time2.
"Pythagoras was contemporaneous with Buddha"
Wow, where to begin--? If you have turned up any evidence that G.W. Walker had anything to do with designing the 1934 DICTATOR cabinet, I'd sure like to see it. I'll admit that, in the attached DOUGH-BOY article, Bueschel talks around the subject a bit, but he makes it sound more like Walker was brought in to cure the Caille Bros. of the stylistic illness that made them vomit out the 1934 DICTATOR design! I think his words regarding the DICTATOR cabinet are pretty harsh there, and he goes on to say that to have applied the DICTATOR moniker to anything "in the thirties is practically incomprehensible." Is it possible that Bueschel was unaware that Studebaker manufactured a popular (and contemporaneous!) "Dictator" model for nearly a decade?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studebaker_Dictator
(Studebaker also manufactured a "Commander" model for many years. Hmmm...)
More to the point, on pg. 114 of "Lemons, Cherries and Bell Fruit Gum," Bueschel writes: "...Walker did the DOUGH BOY, CADET and COMMANDER, and probably influenced the double "CC" (Caille CADET; Caille COMMANDER) names of the latter two." I think if Walker "did" the DICTATOR, Bueschel would have mentioned it in this pg. 114 sidebar; further, I think Knupp alone designed the "Moderne" scale and the "Dictator" cabinet, as his name alone appears on the "Moderne" design patent, and those lines and those geometric motifs shared by the penny scale and the 1934 DICTATOR slot design are simply not Walker's "style." Frankly, it appears to me more as though Knupp later stole design ideas from Walker in creating the "look" of the Multi-Bell cabinet, with its headlight-like jackpot and chrome piping trim... Walker was a famous, cutting-edge automotive stylist, after all, and I think that's how Knupp may well have "updated" his design sense for the AC Multi-Bell project.
Again, I'll gladly eat all my words in the face of better evidence.