Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma – where he also died, at the age of 68, in early 2019 – Tommy Glen Carmichael was a former television repair man, who discovered a knack for cheating slot machines when introduced to the so-called ‘top-bottom joint’ in 1980. He was first arrested for using the rudimentary cheating tool – which short-circuited older, electromechanical slot machines – in Las Vegas in 1985. He was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, but served less than two. Thereafter he embarked on a career as an inventor of more sophisticated cheating devices, with which he would, ultimately, defraud casinos worldwide of thousands of dollars.
His creations included the ‘slider’, or ‘monkey paw’, which could be inserted into the payout chute of a slot machine, tripping a microswitch and causing an illegal release of coins, and the ‘light wand’, which effectively ‘blinded’ the payout sensor, with the same effect. Carmichael was subsequently arrested three times, twice in Las Vegas and once in Atlantic City, for possession of a cheating device and eventually sentenced to time served plus three years’ probation.
Understandably, Carmichael was persona non grata in Nevada and his name still appears on Gaming Control Board List of Excluded Persons, known colloquially as the ‘Black Book’, to which it was added in 2003. Carmichael was the subject of an episode of the ‘Breaking Vegas’ television documentary series, aptly titled ‘Slot Scoundrel’, which aired on The History Channel in 2005.
The invention of the sandwich in its modern sense – that is, two slices of bread with a layer of filling in between – is credited to John Montagu, Fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792), although the circumstances in which he happened upon this ‘food of convenience’ are disputed. According to ‘A Tour to London, Or, New Observations on England and Its Inhabitants’ – a French travel guide, written by Pierre Jean Grosley in 1772 – Montagu once gambled for twenty-four hours straight with only a piece of corned, or salted, beef between two slices of toasted bread for sustenance. However, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, this particular incident, which reputedly occurred in 1762, is widely believed to be fictitious.
