London – Science Museum (Guinevere)

I remember seeing this on the television in the 1990s, one of the original machines used to draw National Lottery numbers randomly. It was brought into use in 1994 following the introduction of the lottery by the then Prime Minister, John Major.

The machine was kept in use until 2004, at which point it was replaced by a shinier machine, although they kept the name Guinevere. It entered the Science Museum’s collections in 2006 and is one of those things that I’m pleased someone thought to keep. The museum reminds visitors that devices have been used for many hundreds of years to produce random results, with this being a more modern version of the technique.

I’m not sure why some of the balls appear more faded than others. I heard some other visitors also overly excited to see Guinevere, perhaps the machine had been helpful to them in the results that it produced…..