The origins of the business lie with Mortimer Birdsul Mills, who was born in 1845 in Canada West (today's Ontario, Canada) but who later became a citizen of the United States, resident in Chicago, Illinois. By the late 1930s, vending machines were being installed by Mills Automatic Merchandising Corporation of New York. The slot machine division was then owned by Bell-O-Matic Corporation. By 1944, the name of the company had changed to Mills Industries, Incorporated.

Between about 19, the company's products included the Mills Violano-Virtuoso and its predecessors, celebrated machines that automatically played a violin and, after about 1909, a piano.

The Mills Novelty Company, Incorporated of Chicago was once a leading manufacturer of coin-operated machines, including slot machines, vending machines, and jukeboxes, in the United States.