Slots HistoryCharles 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.
