(Major necro bump...10 years later!)
Did some searching and found a few threads...this one seemed most relevant.
Tonight I got my dad to tell me the story of his own Lynde-Ordway coin changer. He grew up in New Orleans and took the buses and streetcars around town to his weekly music lesson and then later to get to and from high school. The fare was seven cents, and the conductors would make change for the passengers. They had to have lots of pennies to dispense quickly, so they used these coin changers. He remembers that the ones they used had five barrels, and that they could adjust them to dispense however many coins they wanted to. So not just the denomination for each barrel, but also the amount of coins.
Fast forward a few decades, to the 80s. My dad picked me up from one of the arcades I frequented (probably the Spaceport in the Lehigh Valley Mall in Allentown, PA) and noticed a young woman who was wearing the exact same coin belt changer that he remembered from his childhood. He asked if he could see it up close. He found the company information on the changer and later sent away for one. The one he bought has four barrels.
According to him, the original company name was Johnson, named after the inventor.
Amazing that this company is still around!
The Lynde-Ordway Belt Changer has an open top Casino version which has been used exclusively by the gaming industry for many years. The standard slotted-top version of the beltchanger is used in many other industries, including catering and fast food.
www.lynde-ordway.com
My own memory of these changers is from my time in Spaceport, which was a very popular and busy arcade. These young guys would walk around the arcade and notice if you got out a dollar bill. They had their radar on, you know! They'd be right there at the sight of your bill, take it, and then squeeze out your quarters real fast. I do seem to recall also that they could dispense four quarters at a time, and not just one by one.
Thus my dad did participate in the arcade phenomenon in his own way. Never ever a gamer, nor would he set foot in an arcade if he could help it. But he owns this slice of arcade history and I guess American history going back even further than what I remember.