millsnovelty.com: 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. Between about 1905 and 1930, 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. By 1944 the name of the company had changed to Mills Industries, Incorporated.

The slot machine division was then owned by Bell-O-Matic Corporation. By the late 1930s, vending machines were being installed by Mills Automatic Merchandising Corporation of New York.