Articles    

Where Do Slot Machines Come From?

 
lot

Believe it or not, there was a time when slot machines did not exist, nobody had ever heard of them, and the word payline was not in the dictionary. Even more surprising is that the slot machine is 118 years old, but has gone through so many transformations to be what we know it as today. The original slot machine only had three reels and a few symbols, nowadays we have slot machines of all different types, with all kinds of symbols, and even have microchips operating them faster than any other mechanism ever could. Let's take a small trip down history lane, and learn where slot machines come from.

Slot machines go all the way back to 1895, when Charles Fey invented the world famous Liberty Bell. The Liberty Bell was the first mechanical slot machine in the world, it had three reels, diamond, spade and heart symbols painted, and the image of a cracked Liberty Bell. If you hit three Liberty Bells on a payline, you would get the biggest payout, which at the time was fifty cents or ten nickels. The original Liberty Bell is currently on display at the Liberty Belle Saloon and Restaurant in Reno, Nevada.

However, The Liberty Bell was not the only slot machine this visionary invented. Charles Fey was also the mind behind the Draw Power, the Three Spinde, and the Klondike. Fey also invented the first draw poker machine, and the trade check separator, which was used in his slot machines. The trade check had a hole in the middle allowed for a detecting pin to recognize fake coins from real nickels. As slot machines became more popular across bars and taverns, Charles fey began renting his slot machines on a 50/50 split profit deal.

The demand for slot machine rose so quickly that Charles Fey almost couldn't keep up with it in his small workshop, but when some gambling supply manufacturers trued to buy the manufacturing and distribution rights to the Liberty Bell, Fey did not take their offers and kept on producing them himself. A few years later, in 1907, Herbert Mills, an arcade machine manufacturer in Chicago, designed the Operator Bell, a slot machine that would compete with Fey's Liberty Bell. Herbert Mills was the first to include fruit symbols on the reels, as he added plums, cherries, and lemons to the possible combinations on the reels.

Comments