By the late 1930s, vending machines were being installed by Mills Automatic Merchandising Corporation of New York.
The slot machine division was then owned by Bell-O-Matic Corporation. By 1944, the name of the company had changed to Mills Industries, Incorporated.
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 was once a leading manufacturer of coin-operated machines, including slot machines, vending machines, and jukeboxes, in the United States.