Abstract

Fixed Odds Betting Terminals, a form of high stakes gambling machine, have been very much in the news in 2018. Parliament has been persuaded that such machines, dubbed as the 'crack cocaine of gambling' need tighter regulation. The debate about gambling machines is, however, not new. Coin operated machines have existed for over 2000 years, but the development of technology led to over 1000 applications to the UK patent office in the 1890s for rights on gambling machines.

This paper will show how concerns about gambling machines have peaked at certain times over the last 100 years. Using data from mass observation archives from the 1940s and 1980s, published studies about fruit machine gambling in the 1970s, published social histories of gambling, and recent ethnographic work conducted by the author, the specific place of machines in discourses about gambling and in the lives of individuals,will be highlighted. The place of the UK seaside arcade culture in introducing generations of children to gambling machines will be considered.

Actor Network Theory (ANT) will be used as a theoretical framework. This can help to make sense of the ways in which non human objects, such as gambling machines and gambling premises, and also documents, can be 'actors' and have agency. Such non human actors can inscribe reality, and have agency to influence contemporary networks but also have agency across time.