Innovating the Game: Ronald G. Wayne's Legacy in Electronics and Gaming

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with Curveball. If you believe, you can achieve. Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast. A show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today I am joined by Ronald J. Wayne and Charles A. Sticker. Ronald agent and manager. And we're going to be talking to Ronald about a groundbreaking part of his career that has almost never spoken of Ronald as an inventor, engineer, historian, and lifelong technologist who was responsible for creating the first electronic flight and craft machines. They were approved in 1971. And they replaced the manual machines and introduced electronic logic into the gaming industry. And they paved the way for the industry that we all know today and take for granted. So we're going to be talking to Ronald and Charles about that. And you know, tell Charles if he has anything to add, please feel free to speak up and add it. So, Ronald, G. Wayne, and Charles A. Sticker. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

Thank you. Thank you, sir.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Well, Ronald, why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself? And Charles, if you want to do the same, you can go next.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Alrighty. 92 years old, co-founder of the Apple Computer Company, and uh a uh self-taught engineer. I was graduated from the School of Industrial Arts in New York City in 1957. I am now 92 years old. And uh I uh taught myself basic electronics in the age of vacuum tubes, and then uh basic electronics and uh transistors when they came in, and then integrated circuits. Uh, I've been sort of a tinkerer all of my life and in a variety of technologies. I was a machinist and illustrator, a tech writer, uh all as a result of having uh spent a dozen years as a uh job shop employee in many, many different enterprises. Uh it's in other words, I just uh worked my way through life and uh uh on anything that uh uh gave me uh interest and pleasure. And that is how I run my life. And where shall I go from there, sir?

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Charles, you you want to uh tell tell us.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

All right, I will then step in and say that uh I've had the pleasure of working line alongside this uh most brilliant individual uh who I met uh seven years ago. I'm an electrical engineer from North Carolina AT. And uh I uh met him uh while looking at uh people that might be able to contribute to or assist me with developing some of the intellectual property that I had uh developed, and I uh discovered that we had a co-founder of Apple that happened to live adjacent to uh my city of Las Vegas. So I went over to visit him and uh subsequently we formed a friendship and I've been with him ever since.

SPEAKER_02 3:45

Uh that uh expanded interest in very interesting ways. For instance, uh in 1971, I acquired a uh patent on a uh uh uh on standard uh, I beg your pardon, on a an analog meter, analog meters known as Darson Vall, pointer type meters that were invented by Darsenball in the 1880s. Uh unfortunately the Darsenball meter uh had uh problems. The the problem was that uh the pointer runs on bearings, and every bearing, no matter what you do with it, has a friction. And because of that friction, the pointer never exactly points to exactly the correct reading. Uh and I attacked that problem in 1971 and came up with a type of analog meter with no hunt, no lag, and no hysteresis because the display had no friction. When I presented my uh patent uh to Mr. Stigger here, uh his comment was, Do you know what you have here? And immediately he advanced uh my concept, which had been developed uh what uh 60 years ago or 50 years ago. Uh he advanced it by uh several orders of magnitude into um other uh applications that uh had never occurred to me because he had a spectacular uh formal education, whereas my education stopped with my high school diploma uh coming out of the School of Industrial Arts in New York. All of my technology came out of experience, uh product development and uh self-education.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

And mine came out of uh a lot of research and uh integrated uh studies that uh uh picked up over the years through various co-ops. Uh I'm one of the original engineers that worked at Saturn, helped design um part of the wiring harness and uh some of the other pieces of the uh original Saturn General Motors car. Um I uh also did some research with NASA. And uh seeing the uh way that Mr. Wayne thinks, I was like, are you kidding? Uh this is all you can come up with for that particular device. And uh we've subsequently uh moved forward and we're beginning to uh uh get to the stage where we're going to uh be putting this product out. We've got to do uh some more prototyping and that kind of thing. But essentially, this will give us uh certain capabilities that we have never had in measuring technology.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

And in another category, uh I came up with an arithmetic system which enabled me uh uh to uh solve problems in a particular product I was working on uh for counting coins. And Charles again looks at my patent and says, wait a minute, we can do a heck of a lot more with this. And the net result of his efforts uh and mine jointly would be to create eventually a computer which would be not only faster than any computer in the world today, but any capacitor uh any any computer possible in uh today's technology use, we hope to have in operation and marketed sometime within the next uh year and a half to two years.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Well, Ronald, what what problem were you trying to solve when you created the uh first electronic uh slot and crap machines? And did you realize that it was going to be such a groundbreaking technology that would uh shape an entire industry?

SPEAKER_02 7:53

Well, uh actually I uh had a fascination with uh slot machines at my earliest age. I have a pretty good understanding of um uh uh gaming machines, slot machines, going back to Charlie Fay's first uh uh slot machine, Liberty Bell, invented in the 1890s. And uh it had always been something intriguing to me. And when I became exposed for the first time in my life to casino activities and mechanical slot machines, uh it suddenly occurred to me, with my background in the developmental electronics, that uh wouldn't it be nice if we could get rid of all this machinery and simply replace it with electronic logic and uh have a machine that looks and plays and feels like exactly like a mechanical machine, except that instead of all the uh clatter of uh uh mechanisms, uh it's a much simpler, uh uh easier to build and easier to maintain uh electronic system that controls the three reels. Uh, I wanted a machine that looked and played like any mechanical machine, but uh unknown to the player would be electronics, electronic logic in place of mechanical uh logic.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

So the brilliant thing about this uh gentlemen is that not only did he uh figure out a manner to be able to replace gears and fingers and cogs and uh timers and uh springs and all these mechanical components with all electronic uh components. Initially, his concept was to display all this on a uh frosted glass screen, three of them for the three reels, uh, each of the individual symbols, uh, you know, one at a time to uh, you know, uh in patterns. And if it stopped on a particular set of patterns, then it would determine what the payout would be and make that payout. But because people were still more comfortable with seeing spinning reels, he shoved that, put it aside, and design uh from scratch the logic circuits that are necessary to be able to make that uh uh type of system operate. Because even though they did have what's called TTL chips in uh that day, they had been invented, they were predominantly used in military and other uh you know sophisticated applications, and they were quite expensive. Uh so lacking those uh you know circuits being readily available and the data books on them, uh he designed his own uh analog circuitry to behave like the digital circuitry to be able to uh replicate all the functions that you have in a mechanical machine. That when you pull it under an old uh spring type machine, the springs and the uh timers uh and the clocks that you have inside of that machine behave much like a grandfather clock or a um music box, if you've ever seen the little spinning uh timer that's in there. So all of those things uh come together to give you a variable chance game that uh people have you know long enjoyed playing. And he figured out a manner to be able to, prior to those TTL chips existing, to replicate all of it in digital logic out of analog circuitry.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Well, what what gave what gave you the vision to uh imagination?

SPEAKER_02 11:36

That was the slot machine.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 11:39

Then of course, uh I was asked to design the logic for gentlemen who had put together a craps table that was all electronic, all to be electronic slot machine, and I did the electronic logic. That was uh oh my goodness, what year was that? 72, 71, 72, 71, 70, yeah. Probably 70, yes. So I uh I had a uh table that uh uh you could play anything on this table that you could play on a on a live props table.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

So if you've ever been into any of the casinos and you've seen the little uh dice jumping around on the table, he essentially created that in 1970, 71. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 12:28

Uh had some interesting uh experiences getting that machine qualified because when you get a product like that qualified, it has to go on the floor of a casino. In this case, it went into the golden nugget in Las Vegas, and uh, of course, it goes out on the floor for a month's testing, and I was uh responsible for maintaining this product. Uh the interesting thing was I was wakened in the middle of the night one time to um go down to the golden nugget and uh deal with the problem that they were having. A most unusual kind of a problem. It wasn't a failure in the machine, it was something else. There were uh 24 uh possible options, and you could uh uh bet uh up to 10 coins on any uh option you wish to play as to uh different uh types of bets you could make on any live table. The interesting thing was that I get down there, and there's this gentleman uh who was uh not to put too fine a point on it, he was three sheets in the wind, and uh he had put 240 coins in the machine, and I had uh made a slight mistake. I had never considered the possibility that anybody would ever load up the machine with 240 coins, and then he drops in one more coin, and the machine is saying, Okay, where do you want to bet it? Of course, all the registers were full, so I had to go in and uh uh correct the lockup at least the machine so he could throw the dice. Uh I think he wound up throwing his seven and uh wound up with uh 70 coins or his 241 coins, and then of course, having uh spent quite a bit of time training during this thing, uh he got his coins out of the machine, he then passed out. This is some of the kinds of experiences you I had uh in developing products like this.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

So then, so that uh both you or and or your audience uh will also hear something that is a little unusual, is this guy is actually the gentleman that uh joined with Mr. Wozniak and Mr. Jobs to form Apple Computer Company. But the credentials that you just heard are what gave him the ability to be able to perform at that level.

SPEAKER_02 15:17

Well, I was I was a polymath at the time, somebody who was skilled in many fields. So when I was asked by uh jobs in Wozniak to assist in founding their company, the Apple Computer Company, uh one of my chances was immediately to draw the founding contract, which I did, much to the astonishment of uh Mr. Wozniak in particular, he'd never seen anyone who wasn't a lawyer sit down and type up a uh a three-page uh partnership agreement. He was quite astonished at that.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

At the time that he met the gentleman, uh he was 41, Mr. Wozniak was 25, and Mr. Jobs was 21. So both of them were astounded by uh the things that he was capable of being able to do.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

Well, Ronald, what gave you the vision to uh imagine electronics and and and uh the gaming industry when the gaming industry wasn't even ready for it at the time that that you introduced it?

SPEAKER_02 17:48

Well, I had always thought uh uh how do you simplify things and make them more secure, more reliable? And uh machines wear out, electronics uh can run uh for far longer before anything uh of consequence happens. It's just a simpler, easier, smaller, uh more compact mechanism to perform the logic than all of the machinery that goes on inside a slot machine. It was just simpler and therefore less costly. Therefore, it was possible to design and build uh machines that uh were simpler, easier to maintain, and as I say, uh less costly and more reliable. That's what it came down to.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

I'm also then gonna throw this in that uh when he landed in his uh spacecraft from some other planet and uh implemented this uh foreign technology into it, and no one was ready for it. So, in addition to not being ready for it uh and uh being so far ahead of his time, he was far undercapitalized, which is something that we hope to be able to uh change for a lot of inventors going forward as our uh kind of new uh mission uh once we get established and set up. Um, he didn't have anywhere near the capital that was necessary. One would have needed at least a million dollars even in that time to have effectively competed in that business against the entrenched players, because quite frankly, who wants to switch from tried and true mechanical to electrical in 1971? We don't even have uh VCRs or uh um microwaves running on computers.

SPEAKER_02 19:36

And as a result of the fact that uh this was a unique system and uh more difficult to market than I thought, and as he said, I was undercapitalized. The I had uh formed a corporation called SciEND uh to um uh do this work, and it did not succeed. Now, being a corporation, of course, I could actually have walked away when it failed and simply left everybody uh holding the bag, but I just didn't have the uh kahunas to do that, so I bought back every share of stock for what it was paid for, and I paid every debt that was owed by the company by the partnership or by the corporation uh 100 cents on the dollar, which was a very traumatic experience, and I had to regain my psychological self-confidence. So I decided to take on a project, and the project I took on was uh the uh in the film uh 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by uh Disney, they had created an image of uh Jules Verne's Nautilus. That uh vehicle always intrigued me, and I decided to undertake the task of building a replica model of uh Jules Verne's Nautilus as depicted in the Disney movie. My model, however, was seven feet long, and uh took me a year and a half and a half to put it together, but it was a labor of love. I had a ball putting that thing together. Uh I of course I got two-thirds of the way through it and began to ask myself, when this thing is done, what the heck am I gonna do with it? And I found out I finally wound up uh uh donating it to the Maritime Museum in San Francisco. This was all done 50 years ago, and they have had this thing in storage for the past 50 years. And I was able to go down to uh Pier 45 where they had it stored and uh observed it, and uh they had done a magnificent job of preserving it. Now we're looking at the possibility of putting the thing into a proper case and properly installing it into the Maritime Museum.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

So basically, the follow-up then to that is that uh yes, we will be uh very much hoping that people will come to his website, RonaldGWayne.com, and he's established a 501 nonprofit, and we will be uh setting up there soon to uh receive donations. But our goal is to be able to build it a proper case and uh some signage and that kind of thing, so that this uh uh seven-foot replica that has details both inside and out and lighting uh can be properly displayed and uh viewable by everyone. Currently it is stored in a warehouse that the um uh Maritime Museum uh um has, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 22:56

Yes, uh San Francisco.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

But it's been in storage uh climate control for literally 50 years. He donated it in 76, and uh they had it on display for maybe six months to a year, and ever since then it's been in uh in cold storage.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

Well, why do you feel like this groundbreaking part of your career, Ronald, has been uh undercover and not talked about for so long.

SPEAKER_02 23:25

Well I've never uh particularly made uh much of a uh dent in uh uh public affairs so I've uh just uh sp I spent my life doing whatever amused me at the time uh because that's why uh uh uh fits the philosophy of my life which is for example whenever younger people would approach me and say what should they do for a profession my answer has always been the same find some profession that um is uh so interesting that you'd be willing to do it for nothing and you'll never work a day in your life because you'll be having too much fun but uh I uh gained the position of uh uh chief chief engineer at Thor Electronics is my uh final uh uh employment before my first retirement and uh that was in uh I think it was in ninety five or something like that. And um I was uh chief engineer uh with them for sixteen years uh and uh to be candid as I uh uh since I was the chief engineer I had the keys to the facility and so I would uh go into the uh into the office literally every day of the week uh Sundays holidays holidays meant nothing to me because as far as I was concerned I was having so much fun uh I just uh my boss came into the office one day on a Sunday saw me at the drawing board and said what the heck are you doing here Wayne I said what am I supposed to do sit around the apartment leaving listening my arteries hardened I was just having too much fun and this is what I recommend for anybody to do if they want a well uh gratified life is do what you enjoy doing and uh you'll you'll feel that you led a productive and gratifying life.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

So another couple of things that also should be said with regard to Thor is that Thor he also uh continued to work on slot machine development but at this time it was past the I'm gonna call it opportune window to really get in and the entrenched players uh that were you know completely soaked in money uh made all kinds of moves including insisting that all future uh uh slot machines have uh uh microprocessors in in them and Mr.

SPEAKER_02 26:20

Wayne never really particularly learned how to work with microprocessors so at that point he decided to throw in the towel well that wasn't the only reason I really have no faith in a slot machine that is microprocessor based uh every slot machine that is qualified by the commission uh they check it inside and out and every possibility of seeing how can the game be built so in a in a fraudulent manner. And they can deal with it the electronics they can deal with mechanical machines everything and have been doing so since gaming started in the state of Nevada.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

But 31 and well uh depending on where you work okay uh but uh the problem is that um if if you uh go into microprocessors you've got another problem and that is where is the game logic where tricks can be built in and it's in the logic within the microprocessor and uh if you try to get the uh uh an outline of the game detail the game logic out of the microprocessor and you you call out the program you get a whole bunch of ones and zeros and what does that tell you doesn't tell you a thing so the machines can they could possibly be gaffed uh by the operator and do all sorts of tricky stuff and that was the thing that uh drove me out of the slot machine business the rules of the gaming commission are that uh the player may not uh come up with any method that is allowed to cheat the house nor can the house if they advertise what the actual odds are on the game cannot be allowed to do anything that would cheat the player so in the case of a microprocessor as a designer of microprocessors from digital equipment corporation you can't design a microprocessor or you allow me to design a microprocessor that I can't get into in several different ways that you can't detect.

SPEAKER_02 28:28

So therefore they're all gappable is what it amounts to but that's the only slot machine that they'll qualify.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

So what um what revolution do you guys see coming upcoming in in the gaming industry? Basically like what is the next big thing that you guys see that's going to be introduced in the gaming industry?

SPEAKER_02 28:53

Well it depends upon where you are if you're uh in the city of uh uh Nevada um you can get machines that are uh with built-in programs that gaff the machine and nobody would ever know about it.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

What we're planning on doing is we actually are looking forward to being able to reintroduce uh what we call nostalgic gaming and uh we'd like to be able to set up in some casino in downtown we're looking at a few that would uh let you come into a place that has all of the attendance and uh that kind of thing and period clothes and uh you could also dress in uh similar fashion and play with actual uh silver dollars in other words you'd walk into a casino of the 1920s or 30s uh the casinos that you may have seen in movies uh older people like myself would be walking into nostalgia uh younger people would be walking into things they've seen in movies but uh never experienced themselves that uh was the last interest that I had in the in the gaming industry well is there any final thoughts or any anything else uh you you guys want to say uh to the listeners uh before we close this out anything that I left out that you want to touch on yes actually one and that is is that because of the exact situation that we find ourselves in which is is that I'm comfortable but in other words I don't have or uh you know a lot of resources like to the tune of what it takes to actually get uh some of our business ideas going. Um and I know that other people have uh lots of good ideas that they've come up with over the years. We would like to be able to start up and plan to start up a uh foundation that will fund uh inventors for a share of what the uh profit is out of it if uh the uh uh product actually is taken to market. But we would like to be able to supply the inventor with all of the extra pieces that they need so they have the highest uh you know probability of both retaining ownership and control and being able to see their product all the way through to uh production.

SPEAKER_01 31:12

Expand potential for people who are not financially able to manage it on their own without such help right well ladies and gentlemen Ronaldgwayne.com check out everything that Ronald and Charles is up to and gonna be up to follow rate review share this episode to as many people as possible especially uh upcoming inventors and visit www.curveball337.com to keep up with all things living the dream thank you for listening and supporting the show and Ronald and Charles uh the people out there love you especially those uh gaming people and uh thank you guys for all that you've done and thank you for joining me very good thank you for the opportunity for more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast visit www dot curveball337 dot com until next time keep living the dream