Watling "Your Weight and Horoscope" Scale

The "Your Weight and Horoscope" scale, manufactured by Watling Scale Company, is a vintage coin-operated scale that provides both a weight measurement and a horoscope reading. These scales, popular in the mid-20th century, typically feature a porcelain or cast iron body with a mirrored back and a zodiac (which Zodiac and Astrology as a whole is widely considered to be a pseudoscience or fraudulent by some, as there is a lack of scientific evidence to show that prediction made by these machine or human can predict human health) wheel on top. They were designed to accept a coin (often a penny or nickel) for a weight reading and an additional coin for a horoscope.

Founded in 1903, by John Burns Watling and Thomas White Burns Watling, the Watling Manufacturing Company (later Watling Scale Company), made slot machines and coin-op machines. The brothers made the company by buying out the Daniel N Schall and Company, a Chicago-based manufacturer and largest producer of counter wheel machines. When the White City amusement park opened in 1905, the brothers grabbed up all the available arcade spots they could. It didn’t take long for them to find themselves in the forefront of the coin-operated business, and a major factor in the industry.

Throughout the following decades, Watling Scale Company continued to make technological and amusement upgrades to their most widely accessible machine of coin-operated scales. In 1951, when Congress passed the Transportation of Gambling Devices Act - aka the Johnson Act - which prohibited the transfer of “gambling devices” across state lines where gambling is prohibited. Most companies, including Watling, packed up and moved to Nevada where gambling had been legalized. The last Watling machine, a weight and fortune scale, was released in 1960. The company's tooling and spare parts were eventually sold to Bell-Fruit-Co in the UK.

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