The Story

Klondike Days, Edmonton

At Klondike Days in Edmonton, in the late '80s and through the '90s, a booth machine sold you a personality reading for about ten dollars.

1. You filled in a slip the size of a business card with your birth date, your birth time and your signature.
2. The attendant fed it into a slot. Lights flashed and gauges moved.
3. Out came a card about 3 × 10 inches. One side held your zodiac and numerology: character traits, challenges, aptitudes. The other side held a personality reading: your disposition, your likes, your frustrations.

We fed one of those machines a slip at Klondike Days, and the card stuck with us.

The secret of the old machines

The closest documented match to that machine ran at state fairs in the US. In a 2003 interview, the company's regional representative confirmed it picked from only ten fixed personality profiles. The theatre was the product.

What we built instead

The same experience, done honestly and done better. The lights and the gauges are still here. Underneath them, the machine actually calculates your signs and numbers from your birthday, and composes a card from a library of lines picked for you, not one of ten. It comes back as a keepsake card, two sides, 3 × 10 inches, just like the fair.

It's sold as entertainment and self-reflection, never as science. See how the machine works.