Slots History Started with the Liberty Bell

The earliest origins of the slot machine can be traced back to the late 19th century in Brooklyn, New York. There, a company called Sittman and Pitt developed a gambling machine on which modern-day slots are based. Their game was based on poker and was sort of a lottery that called up 5 cards out of a 50-card deck, forming poker-hand combinations for the player. For 5 cents a round, players would pull a lever, the drum would spin, and 5 random cards would come out. Prizes were not offered by the machine itself; rather, if a player won, he'd be awarded a free beer or a free pack of cigarettes from the proprietor of the saloon in which the machine was found.

Slot Machine History

But the real father of the slots was an inventor by the name of Charles Fey who worked out of San Francisco. In 1887, Fey created the original one-armed bandit. He invented a slots machine with three spinning reels containing a total of five symbols - horseshoes, diamonds, spades, hearts and a bell, after which the machine was named - the Liberty Bell. Fey's machine also had an automatic payout mechanism - the machine itself (and not the bartender) paid the player. Three bells in a row paid the "big" jackpot - 10 nickels (the nickel being the original bet). Fey's Liberty Bell was a huge success.

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Even Video Slots Hark Back to Slot Days of Yore

Another early machine gave out winnings in the form of fruit-flavored chewing gum and the flavors decorated the reels; the popular cherry and melon symbols have their roots in this machine. Some classic slot machines still use bar symbols - single bars, double bars, and triple bars. That bar symbol is a throwback to logo of the Bell Fruit Gum, which was used as a symbol in early slot machines. The only difference is that nowadays the white lettering on the black bar says "BAR," whereas it used to say "Bell Fruit Gum.'' The bar is also similar to the Wrigley arrow still used on packages of Spearmint and Doublemint gum. Some early slot machines dispensed Wrigley's gum and used the Wrigley arrow as a symbol.

Slots stayed popular - and more or less the same - until, in 1964, Bally introduced the first electromechanical slot machine called "Money Honey." The 1970s brought about another revolution as companies began using microchips and random number generators to determine the outcome of the spinning reels. The term "one-armed bandit" became an anachronism as the slot machines no longer had levers to pull. As the microchip advanced, so did slots. By the 80's, all the casinos went to microchip-powered slots, called video slots, which were basically computerized slot machines that came with great graphics and cool themes.

Online Slots Make History

Finally, in the 1990s, slot machines made the moved to the Internet, where they became even more popular - and jackpots became even bigger - than anyone could have ever imagined. The software in the online slots on your home computer is the same as in a video slot in a Las Vegas casino. The internal workings of today's machines may be a far cry from the original slot machine, but the look and feel and purpose of today's super modern slots still bear Charles Fey's enduring imprint.

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