The Zero Armed Bandit

"I don’t think it belongs here." Such was the assessment of Bob
Vinson, the graveyard shift supervisor at Harvey's Wagon Wheel
Casino in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. The "here" Vinson referred to was a
nook just outside the telephone equipment room in the
employees-only portion of the second floor of the hotel. The "it"
was a curious piece of equipment of unknown origin loitering
conspicuously in the cramped side room. It was a metallic gray box
about the size of a desk, with a smaller box attached on top near
the rear right corner. The front face of the smaller box was an
incomprehensible control panel occupied by 28 metal toggle switches
in five neat rows, each labeled with a numbered sticker. All of
these switches were situated in the down position except for #23,
which was toggled up—an oddly ominous asymmetry. It was
approximately 6:30am on Tuesday, 26 August 1980, and although Bob
Vinson had been on shift all night long, he hadn't heard any large
equipment delivery commotion from his nearby office, and he was
sure this thing hadn't been there an hour earlier. Whoever had left
the machine had taken the time to place each corner on blocks of
wood, and these blocks pressed deep dimples into the red-orange
carpet, suggesting that the equipment had significant mass. In
spite of its resemblance to some kind of manufactured
electromechanical office machine, it had no power cord, and no
obvious power switch, just the 28 enigmatic toggles. To add alarm
to intrigue, Vinson had found that some of the keyholes for the
doors leading into the area had been hastily jammed using what
appeared to be toothpicks and glue. An envelope with "Harvey's
Management" typewritten on one side lay on the carpet alongside the
object. Vinson was reasonably suspicious that the envelope did not
contain anything as harmless as an invoice. "Stay here," Vinson
instructed the custodian who had been examining the mystery object
with him. "Don’t touch it. Don’t let anyone fool with it. I’ll be
right back." Vinson soon returned with companions, having summoned
members of Harvey's Wagon Wheel Casino security, who had
subsequently summoned sheriff 's deputies and the fire department.
After prodding the envelope with a broomstick to ensure it wasn't
booby-trapped, those to whom it was concerned gingerly extracted
three pages of typed text from the envelope. The letter claimed
that this device was a bomb.