Dransfields expansion
When Harry's son, Jack, joined the business in 1970s, Dransfields steadily expanded to become one of the largest machine suppliers in the North of England.
The story of the ‘Nudge’
The nudge feature, which is still an integral part of most modern gaming machines was developed and patented by Dransfields many years ago and demonstrates its long established pedigree within the industry.
Carfield Engineers Ltd was established by Albert Carter and Harry Dransfield in the early 1960s. When Trevor Carter, Albert’s son, was watching an early machine being played, the reels displayed two jackpot bars with the third jackpot bar just above the winning position on the third reel. The player said: ”If only we had some way of moving the third bar down onto the winline“. This was the spark that led to the development of the ‘nudge’ and was incorporated in the very popular ‘Club Nudger’.
At that time, the feature would allow only one nudge on one reel to advance downwards to enhance the chances of a winning combination. Later, game enhancement was increased dramatically by allowing multiple nudges on all reels.
Two machines, ‘Feature Win’ and ‘Reel Chance’, were developed by Jim Trueman of Dransfields using the new multi-nudge technology between 1973 and 1974 and another machine, ‘Count Down’ was developed by Carfields.
The machines were an instant success with time penalties on nudging greatly increasing the excitement of the machines.
Both Carfields and Dransfields continued to design new games and the nudge feature was further enhanced with the advent of electronic technology, allowing reels to be nudged up as well as down. Around 70 machines were developed by Dransfields between 1973 and 1994 and the nudge feature was adopted by most other manufacturers. It still remains one of the most popular features of the modern gaming machine.