The machine's design included a circle of owls perched on a lithographed tin wheel.

In 1897, the company launched the Mills Owl, which was the first mechanical upright cabinet slot machine. Mills’ patented 1891 contribution to cigar vending machine Over half of a century later, the company would promote itself as having been founded in 1889, two years before the date of the patent, and by H.S. Cigar Vending Company sometime between 1891, and 1895. Focusing on the devices covered by the patent, Mortimer Mills founded the M.B.M. Mortimer Mills was granted United States patent 450,336 on Apfor an improvement in “coin-actuated vending apparatus.” The improvement allowed the purchaser to select the product being sold and manipulate it so that it was carried to the point of delivery. We are very happy to report that we still have the entire original PATENT files of the Violano for the company and can share these if a reader is researching a certain item. The two brothers had a number of patents to their name. In 1929, at age57, Herbert Mills died leaving a fortune to his wife and eight children. The Mills brothers were raised in Oak Park, Illinois, and continued to live in that area until the mid 1930s.

His younger brother, Hayden ('Bill') Mills, was born two years later in about 1902. In about 1900, Herbert Mills, the third son of Herbert Stephen Mills was born. Mills, Herbert's second son, was born circa 1898. Mills, the first of Herbert Mills' sons, was born. Mills, the youngest of Mortimer Mill's children was born. One son, Herbert Stephen Mills, was born in 1872 when his father was about 27. The origins of the business lie with Mortimer Birdsul Mills, who founded the company in the 1880’s and went on to produce coin operated machines.

By the late 1930s, vending machines were being installed by Mills Automatic Merchandising Corporation of New York. The slot machine division was then owned by Bell-O-Matic Corporation. By 1944 the name of the company had changed to Mills Industries, Incorporated. Between about 19, the company's products included the Mills Violano Virtuoso and its predecessors, celebrated machines that automatically played a violin and, after about 1909, a piano. The Mills Novelty Company, Incorporated of Chicago, was once the world’s leading manufacturer of coin operated machines, including slot machines, vending machines, and jukeboxes, in the United States.

Mills slot machine serial numbers