Every Bildschirmspiel 01 has a serial number (Einlagenummer) on the sticker below the right controller. 230 validated devices have a fully readable number; the highest is 989. None has more than three digits. Devices with a partly unreadable number (such as “42X”) are not counted on this page.
Numbers occur more than once
22 numbers occur more than once in the archive (list of duplicates). If each of these devices got a random number from 1 to 999, one would expect 23 repeated numbers on average – almost exactly as many. In November 2026 two numbers even occurred three times, and some duplicates concern devices that look identical.
So the serial number is not unique. If every number had been assigned only once, there would be no duplicates at all; a few printing or production errors (see Duplication of serial numbers found) would explain only a handful. That there are almost exactly as many as chance predicts rather suggests that the numbers from 1 to 999 were used several times. In that case, far more than 999 devices were built.
The number says nothing about the look
All three families are spread across the whole number range. The chart shows the devices by hundreds range and sticker; chassis, controller and button colours look the same (Statistics). So no number range belongs to a particular family.
Unevenly spread – but only weakly
Some hundreds ranges appear more often in the archive than others. With the current number of devices, the difference is only weakly significant (in November 2026 the probability of it arising by chance was about 1 percent). Since many properties were examined at once on these pages, this is not a reliable finding. More recorded devices will show whether it holds.
The last digit
The last digits of the numbers are evenly distributed. That speaks for the quality of the data: with estimated or misread numbers, single digits such as 0 or 5 would often be overrepresented.
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