The machine was a great success and the company would later adopt an owl motif as its trade mark. 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.
Focusing on the devices covered by the patent, Mortimer Mills founded the M.B.M.
The improvement allowed the purchaser to select the product being sold and manipulate it so that it was carried to the point of delivery. Mortimer Mills was granted United States patent 450,336 on 14 April 1891 for an improvement in 'coin-actuated vending apparatus'. The origins of the business lie with Mortimer Birdsul Mills, who was born in 1845 in Ontario, Canada but who later became a citizen of the United States, resident in Chicago, Illinois. 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, Illinois was once a leading manufacturer of coin-operated machines, including slot machines, vending machines, and jukeboxes, in the United States.
