A Brief History Of Slot Machines
Sittman and Pitt invented the first slot machine in Brooklyn, New York. It wasnt even called a slot machine but a gambling machine. This gambling machine consisted of five total drums, which held fifty poker card faces (removing the ten of spades and the jack of hearts would give the house and edge by cutting the chances of getting a royal flush in half). Players would have to pay a nickel to play, after they inserted the nickel, they could pull a lever, which would begin to spin the drums that contained the cards. The drums would eventually stop to reveal a poker hand, the better the poker hand the better the payout.
Back then, there was no direct money payout for a winning hand, instead, players could win a free beer or a cigar; the payouts and prizes all depended on the owner of the establishment. This machine soon became very popular and before you knew it, almost every bar or restaurant owned a gambling machine. This gambling machine was the first step into the production of modern day slot machines.
Charles Fey invented the first modernistic slot machine in 1887. Fey wanted to make a slot machine that had a much simpler automatic mechanism. The original gambling machine created by Sittman and Pitt used playing cards as the main premise. Fey and many others saw a flaw in this setup; there was a high number of possible ways to win with a poker card based game. For this reason, Fey decided to create a machine with three spinning reels that could land on a combination of five total symbols.
Feys original symbols were diamonds, hearts, spades, horseshoes, and a liberty bell (the liberty bell symbol went on to be the name of Feys slot machine). By replacing the playing cards with the five symbols, Fey devised a machine that could provide effective automatic payouts. Feys Liberty Bell became one of the most popular slot machines of his time, creating a new chapter in casino gambling.
It wasnt until 1964 when Bally developed the first fully electronic slot machine called Money Honey. This new spin on slot machines allowed the machines to have a bottomless hopper, which could hold up to 500 coins, eliminating the need for an attendant to process the payouts. The Money Honey machine sparked a rapid increase in the production of electronic slot machines. Electronic slot machines are now predominant on the casino floor.