The story
How three dice in a student bar in Stockholm became a slot machine, and more than thirty years later an app.
1991
It started with three dice
In the fall of 1991 I started studying computer engineering at KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. The students in the computer science chapter ran their own bar, and it already had a tradition when I arrived: the Stochastic Drink.
You paid 25 kronor, about three dollars at the time, and rolled three dice in different colors. One picked the spirit, one the liqueur and one the mixer. You drank what you got. If you really couldn't face one of the ingredients, you could swap it for another 5 kronor.
Some combinations were truly wild. Bäska Droppar, a bitter Swedish wormwood schnapps, topped up with milk. Something awful with punsch, the sweet Swedish arrack liqueur.
1993
A slot machine from a waste room
In 1993 I was part of Drifveriet, the team that organized the welcome weeks for new students. Every year's team takes on projects of its own, and one of ours was mine.
Someone had left an old slot machine from Cherry Casino in a bulky waste room. I knew that kind of machine well. At fifteen I had a summer job at Cherry, soldering on circuit boards to change the machines' odds of paying out.
My idea was to rebuild it so that it played the Stochastic Drink, with spirit, liqueur and mixer on the three reels, and a bit more automation than a handful of dice.
The machine wasn't really broken, just old and worn. I oiled the mechanics and replaced the electronics. Another member of the team had access to a good color laser printer and designed new reel graphics, and the whole machine was dressed up to suit the chapter.
Then I wired it to a panel in the bar. You paid your 25 kronor, and the bartender unlocked the machine so you could pull the lever. When the reels stopped, LEDs on the panel lit up to show the mix, so the bartender never had to go and read the reels. Just like on an old slot machine, you could hold a reel and spin again, but holding cost extra.
It was very popular. Later welcome teams took care of it after us, but I don't know for how long, or whether it still exists.
2010
The idea that waited
When the iPhone came along, I kept thinking the machine would make a good app. In 2010 I went to WWDC, Apple's developer conference, with a friend, and we came up with lots of app ideas. This was one of them. Later I actually started building it in Objective-C, but I never found the time to finish it. My work as a consultant at NeoLogic kept me busy.
Now that AI tools have made programming so much faster, I finally decided to give it a go. That became Cocktail Shuffle.
Today
What changed
The Stochastic Drink lives on in Wild mode, where anything can land on the reels. Hold is still there, and it no longer costs extra. But most of the time you want a drink that is actually good, so the app also spins real cocktails from its recipe collection, to inspire you to try something new.
Mixing drinks has long been an interest of mine, and I have mixed most of the cocktails in the app myself.
Paul
Have you seen the machine?
If you know what happened to it, or you have photos, I would love to hear from you. I know it was photographed, but I have never managed to find any pictures. Write to support@cocktailshuffle.app.