Slots History
Charles Fey was widely believed to be the first to invent slot machines, but this not true in any way. The first slots were designed in New York by Pitt and Sittman in 1891.It had 5 drums and each spin displayed a poker hand. It had no means of paying back anything, and relied on the owners of the machines to provide a prize, depending on the poker hand that was spun. Most prizes were usually drinks of some kind. Of course, a few cards were missing to prevent the ease of making a royal flush, and this was the beginning of slots history house advantages.
Then Charles Fey came along. He made Liberty Bell, in his home in San Francisco and called his new invention a "slot machine." San Francisco quickly became a mecca of slots history. People couldn’t get enough of the cast iron beasts.
His first slot machine was nothing like what a guy would find in Vegas today.. Instead of fruit symbols, it had star, horseshoes, and suits from playing cards, like diamonds and spades. And hearts.
Fey then made a follow up that achieved critical acclaim among slot machine aficionados in the Bay Area. He called his new machine the Operator Bell slot machine.
This was the beginning of the recognizable "fruit design", with cherries and a number "7." Slots history was going to change for good. Fey was quickly copied, and later, busted.
Fey started making gum dispensers out of his next designs. Anti-slot sentiments were becoming popular throughout the West. Vending machine owners were often penalized for this unfairly, since the public perception between gambling devices and vending machines was less than distinct.
Fey was also the target of corporate espionage, and one of his prototypes was stolen. The Bell-Fruit Gum Company in Chicago suddenly started manufacturing slots that dispensed chewing gum. On the slot, one of the symbols was a bar of gum. The BAR symbol has been retained over the years from the marketing efforts of the Bell-Fruit Gum Company.
Antigambling forces finally made slots illegal in most of the West. Between the activities of the California and Nevada legislatures, and the catastrophic San Francisco earthquake of 1906 that devastated the entire Bay Area, along with Fey's factory, slots history was largely on pause, until Bugsy Siegal brought them back into mainstream popularity.
Bugsy Siegel, the father of the Las Vegas Strip needed a gimmick for his new Flamingo Hilton casino. He needed something cheap and simple to amuse the wives and girlfriends of the men that played casino games and poker, so the men could play longer. Bugsy commissioned the creation of a new and improved slot machine, that was more exciting and harder to cheat. In a generation, Bugsy would find slots were more than just a cheap gimmick. They made more money than the table games.
By the early 60's slot machine design had become completely electric. Slot machine history left all vestiges of the memory of the mechanical design of Charles Fey in the blind. They became more reliable, harder to cheat, and had more features, like motorized coin hoppers that made it easier to pay out, and electric bells so that casino staff could be aware of a jack pot. This made the growin g numbers of slots on the casino floor easier to manage with a smaller staff. Without this design, casinos would need an attendant on every row in a slot machine area.
By the late seventies and early eighties, slots began using microchips. Logic was done with a random number generator, and the cost of slots got even lower. People didn't like them at first, so manufacturers emulated the sounds and action and feel of the older slots.
Eventually, once freed completely of anything other than the microprocessor to power a slot machine, slots history provided the world with other innovations, like the progressive slots, which paid enormous jackpots due to the machines all being linked together, sometimes across states, all sharing the same jackpot. Multi-line slots and slots with video, and slots with sound soon took many new players into the fold.
Today there are many variations of Fey's idea.. Software is identical in the online slots as it in the slot machines on the casino floor, blurring the distinction between the two.
The good news is that now, you can make slots history of your own and try playing at the casinos any time of day.
Susan McClary - Senior Editor