A machine identical to this one used to stand on Brighton Station in the 1960s.

Does anyone remember it and the rather strange thing it did?

It stamped out a metal plate for a shilling (5p today) with any words you wanted.

I remember doing my name, which is what most people did and, I think, you were allowed up to 20 letters.

You put a shilling in, swung the pointer round to the letters needed, then pushed the lever to stamp them, one after another, into a tin strip being fed along inside the machine.

Then another lever was pulled or pushed to cut the strip off and the final finished plate dropped out of the slot at the front.

The plate could be used for labelling a box, your coat peg or whatever you wanted, the ends being curved and the tin thin enough to take a small nail hammered through it.

The picture here wasn't taken at the station but on the Palace Pier in the 1980s when an identical machine was part of the Slot Machine Museum housed in the old cafe area of the pier theatre.

The theatre was demolished in 1986 when the Noble Organisation became the pier's new owners, which meant the museum lost its home.

It's now underneath the arches on the lower promenade, roughly opposite Pool Valley.

It's a marvellous place to see and play some of the really old machines that used to be on both Brighton's piers before electronics and profits killed the simple "penny in the slot" fun of simple, seaside days.

-Chris Horlock, Shoreham