Who Invented Slot Machines

• Who Invented Machine Gun
• First Slot Machine

Known exclusively as slot machines, one-armed bandits or fruit machines, the first 'pokies' were basic coin-operated gambling devices. The question as to who invented pokies in this form is a little bit hazy, given that these devices blurred the line between a slot and a novelty parlour or mechanised bar game – such as those that had. The first slot machine was invented in 1891 by Sittman and Pitt in New York. The machine was originally based on the game of poker and held over 50 card faces. These machines would often attract a big crowd of people to watch as players inserted their coins and pulled the lever.

Introduction to Slot Machine History

The first coin-operated slot machine was invented just over 130 years ago. That's a lot of slot machine history. However, understanding it provides insight into the next technological advancements to expect from this entertainment machine.

In a hopefully fun and interesting way, I'll highlight developments in gaming machines having slots for accepting coins as a sequence of events. Several significant areas of slot machine history includes:

• Technology
• Popularity
• Government Regulations

As you'll learn, slot machine popularity waxed and waned alongside the governmental responses to this type of gambling. The first coin-operated slot machines were invented in or around 1887.

Nowadays, we have modern day penny slots and networked progressive slot machines. Gaming machines show no signs of doing anything other than just keep on developing and improving, likely for another 130 years and beyond.

This post has the following sections:

• Introduction to Slot Machine History
• Charles Fey, the 'Father of Slot Machines'
• Bell Fruit Gum Slot Machines
• American Prohibition 1920-1933, the 'Golden Age of Slots'
• Nevada Legalized Gambling in 1931
• Decades of Bally Slot Machine Development Efforts
• The Computer Microchip Revolution of the 1980s
• Arrival of the Internet and Better Computers in the 1990s
• Online Slots and Involvement with Governments
• The First Rewards Clubs
• Computer Networks: Progressive Slot Machines and More
• Summary of Slot Machine History

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Charles Fey, the 'Father of Slot Machines'

The Liberty Bell, arguably the first slot machine for gambling with automatic payouts, was invented in 1887 by Bavarian-born Charles Fey in San Francisco, California. Given a natural disaster I'll mention momentarily, there is some debate as to this exact date.

This slot machine simulated the card game of poker, having 3 spinning reels each with 5 symbols: diamonds, hearts, horseshoes, spades, and an image of the Liberty Bell.

It even had the first slot machine payout table. The highest jackpot, fifty cents or 10 nickels, occurred when all three reels showed a golden Liberty Bell. It was wildly popular and a massive success.

Prior to Charles Fey's 1887 invention in San Francisco, there were gambling machines – but they didn't have slots for coins. Therefore, despite prior technologies being used in that device, Fey's coin-operated machine is generally considered to be the first true 'slot machine'.

Given the aforementioned loss of historical records, it's worth mentioning that the Sittman and Pitt Company of Brooklyn, New York was developing a coin-operated slot machine at around the same time. It was based on five-card poker, as it had five reels.

Fey is generally considered to be the 'Father of Slots', both due to his invention but also because he popularized the game. For example, he didn't sell his slot machines. Instead, he rented them for a 50% commission of their revenues.

Fey's San Francisco workshop is a California Historical Landmark. Many of Charles Fey's innovations are still common in modern slot machines, including:

• Coin-operated.
• Operated by pulling a (small) handle.
• Rented, not sold, for a portion of gaming revenue.
• Pay table display.

Few Liberty Bell slot machines currently exist. About 100 of them remain of those originally manufactured by Charles Fey in San Francisco, as most were lost in the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.

According to Marshall Fey's fascinating book Slot Machines: A Pictorial Guide to the First 100 Years, fires created by the earthquake

'…that day eventually consuming all of the city's slot machine factories, including their tooling and inventory.'

and, further, the fires

'…hit most of the city's 2,000 businesses which had slot locations, destroying thousands of machines and the coins which they contained.'

Bell Fruit Gum Slot Machines

Starting in 1907, Bell Fruit Gum slot machines was manufactured by Industry Novelty Co. This was quickly followed the next year by Mills Novelty Company of Chicago, which had been inherited by Herbert Stephen Mills.

The reels on these machines included cherry, melon, orange, apple, and bar symbols with non-cash payouts in the form of fruit-flavored gum, allowing machine owners to avoid prosecution under the anti-gambling laws of that time.

The cherry and bar symbols became traditional to slot machines, and are still commonly used today. The Mills slot machine added the photograph of a chewing gum pack along with the fruit reel symbols. Soon after these photographs were replaced with a stylized bar symbol, the Mills company logo.

Photographs of early slot machines are available at Cyprus Casino Consultant, Casino Observer, and International Arcade Museum.

For more on the rather interesting if somewhat shady history between Charles Fey and Herbert Stephen Mills, as well as a analysis of these early slot machine photographs, see my post called Why Do Slot Machines Say Bar on their Reel Symbols?

Thanks to the efforts of Charles Fey and other early slots manufacturers, by 1910 slot machines could be found world-wide. Europe had mass produced 30,000 of them. In America, they could be found in most cigar stores, saloons, bowling parlors, brothels and barber shops.

Improvements immediately found in slot machines were:

• Cast iron machines replaced with wooden cabinets.
• Improved mechanicals allowed for back-to-back jackpots, not possible in earlier designs.
• New coin acceptor developed to limit the use of fake coins, i.e., 'slugs'.
• Machines were designed to be quieter.

In 1909, new laws began to be introduced prohibiting slot machines from dispensing cash, with the results of slot machines having the aforementioned non-cash payouts of fruit-flavored gum.

American Prohibition 1920-1933, the 'Golden Age of Slots'

From 1920 to 1933 is when Prohibition existed in America, making the consumption or supply of alcohol illegal.

Winrar software free download for pc. Since slot machines were mainly found in bars and saloons, they moved to speakeasies alongside the distribution of alcohol – and returned to offering cash prizes.

Slot machine popularity increased even more. The time of Prohibition is also referred to as the 'Golden Age of Slots' due to this tremendously increased popularity.

Nevada Legalized Gambling in 1931

Gambling was legalized in the state of Nevada in 1931, the first state to do so. This was done due to the increasing popularity of gambling despite governmental pressure on the gaming industry.

In the 1940s, an early slot machine was installed in the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. By doing so, American mobster Bugsy Siegal showed slot machines to be a lucrative business opportunity for casinos.

Hungry shark play online free. After World War II, municipalities were drawn by the prospect of tax revenue, and exponential growth occurred in the manufacturing and playing of slot machines well into the 1960s.

Decades of Bally Slot Machine Development Efforts

Slot machine development advanced from a fully mechanical machine to an electro-mechanical device in 1963 with the Money Honey slot machine by Bally Technologies, a company formerly limited to the manufacturing of pinball machines.

Besides improving game play and all manner of flashing lights and sounds, electrical components allowed for multi-coin bets with higher payouts.

By 1970, Bally had added more reels and made coin-handling improvements to allow for more coins and higher denominations, resulting in larger jackpots for consumers. Bally went public in 1975, trading on the New York Stock Exchange as the first gaming company.

The first true electronic slot machine, e.g., the video slot machine, was developed in 1976 in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was placed in the Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas and, after further security modifications were made against cheating, received approval from the state of Nevada.

Atlantic City, New Jersey legalized gambling in 1978, by which time Bally had cornered 90% of the market for slot machines. Bally continued to add reels, knowingly decreasing the odds of winning but also increasing the size of jackpots.

Over time, the number of symbols per reel were increased to a maximum of 25 and wagers were raised to $5, $25, and eventually $100.

Bally also hired a computer programmer to increase the size of jackpots without losing profits for the company, which was accomplished by utilizing a random number generator (RNG), resulting in yet another technological revolution in slot machine gaming.

For the first patented RNG, see U.S. Patent Number 4,448,419, awarded in 1984 to Igne S. Telnaes, entitled 'Electronic gaming device utilizing a random number generator for selecting the reel stop positions.'

The Computer Microchip Revolution of the 1980s

In the 1980s, computer microchips allowed a leap forward in slot machine technological advances, including video slots, online slots, and linked machines for progressive slots. In Las Vegas in 2003, a linked slot machine with a shared jackpot reached an extremely large size before it was won: nearly $40 million.

One of the first slot machines with video reels was the Fortune Coin by Walt Fraley. Slot manufacturer IGT purchased its patent from Fortune Coin, then developed it further to overcome an initial distrust of this new technology by slot machine players as well as improving its overall technical operation.

Due to the application of targeted marketing techniques, video poker machines were found to be fair and could be trusted, thereby overcoming people's initial skepticism over how fair the video slot machines would be, and building a public perception of trust.

Arrival of the Internet and Better Computers in the 1990s

In the 1990s, the advent of the internet and increasingly fast and powerful computers allowed for the first electromechanical slot machines with bonus games, multiple lines, and the modern version of online slots.

With today's ready online access, casinos have established a wide base of slot players while online game developers are mostly only limited by their imagination.

The first video slot machine with two screens was created in Australia in 1994, followed by America in 1996. The second screen was used to provide the player with a different environment in which bonuses could be played.

Online Slots and Involvement with Governments

Online slots began in 1994 with the passing of the Free Trade and Processing Act by Antigua and Barbuda in the Caribbean, allowing companies from all over the world to open online casinos legally. Online gaming software was first developed by Microgaming.

The first online casino, Internet Gaming Inc. (ICI), was launched in 1995 and InterCasino began the following year. The online gambling industry grew prodigiously in the years following with the number of available software companies, online casinos, and games.

To protect and support online players, the Canadian Kahnawake Gaming Commission was established in 1996.

What followed was a period in which brick-and-mortar casinos were financially threatened by the sudden influx of online casinos, where players were depositing money to make wagers and played various games of chance online.

In 2006, market competition between land casinos and online casinos had become intermittent, when the U.S. Senate passed the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act (UIGEA) which, in part, banned wire money transactions to and from the accounts of online gambling companies.

Further, it prohibits amongst other things, a casino operator from accepting a bet by means of the internet, when it's already prohibited where the bet is initiated or made.

Such transactions have potentially severe criminal and civil sanctions attached, as imposed by the UIGEA, upon both the casino operator and on financial institutions involved in the wager.

However, it does allow for wagers placed within a single state where the method for placing and receiving the bet is authorized by that state's law, provided that the intermediate routing of the transmission does not extend outside of the state.

In the U.S., only state-sanctioned casinos could legally have physical slot machines. By 2013, some local-level governments within the state of Illinois have allowed bars and restaurants in their jurisdictions to offer slot machines and other electronic gaming machines.

The First Rewards Clubs

Going back to the early 1980s, the airline industry introduced the first customer loyalty programs. Since that introduction, they have shown significant growth in the tourism and hospitality industries, among many others.

These loyalty programs often take an industry-wide adoption approach of 'follow the leader', where competitors quickly adopt a loyalty program if their competitors have done so.

Customer loyalty programs have always existed in the gaming industry, especially by casinos employing hosts to create personal relationships with their premium players by providing complimentary rewards.

More recently, along with technological sophistication came casino customer slots clubs for all casino patrons, which casino operators attempt to use in order to create a competitive advantage.

Casinos offer players club rewards based on amount of play. Being able to track how much each player spent gambling allows a casino to value the complimentary gifts they give to these players.

Previously, it was left up to casino operators and managers to determine whether a player would be offer a free dinner, a hotel room, cruise, or other 'comp' based on their relationship.

Given the relatively overwhelming number people frequenting casinos, it became ineffective for casinos to depend on employees judging the performance of players. In essence, the introduction of players clubs allowed a finer control over company costs, thereby improving casino profits.

Becoming a member was also to the advantage of most players with regards to being relatively fair in the distribution of complimentary gifts. Players club systems were described in my blog post Seven Advantages Of Players Clubs for Playing Slots, along with tips on how to capitalize on the complimentary gifts received through them.

Computer Networks: Progressive Slot Machines and More

Who Invented Machine Gun

In the early 2010s, slot machine manufacturers introduced yet another revolutionary technological change: computer network connectivity. The most obvious change of this feature to slot machine appearance was replacing LED signs having single-color displays to multi-color LCD touch screens for the player reward system.

With these touch screens, and the associated connectivity to the casino's computer network, players are able to order drinks whenever desired without waiting for an attendant to appear nearby.

As a result, this connectivity allowed casinos to somewhat reduce their labor force of waiters and waitresses, again resulting in a corresponding increase in company profits.

Another technological change introduced recently has been the ability of the player to choose the value of each credit from a limited number of possible values. While this is a somewhat minor feature, it provides evidence of the slot machine gambling/gaming industry providing convenience to their customers as well as increasing company profits.

The labor force of slot technicians was reduced again, as this higher level of connectivity to slot machines allowed casinos fully eliminate one role of their slot machine attendants – the relatively time-consuming task of physically updating the payout odds on each and every individual machine.

Technicians still service slot machines for both planned and unplanned maintenance, but each machine's network connection to a computer hub now finely controls the payout odds of slot machines.

The consequences of this change in payout odds being finely controlled by the casino are, in general, discussed in my posts on winning slots strategies.

In them, I explain how to 'beat' the algorithm used to improve playing odds from below the typical payout return percentage of 90-98%, i.e., losing money, to have effective odds over 100%, i.e., making money over time.

In other words, this latest technological innovation has turned slot machine gambling from a mostly luck-based game of chance, to a skill-based game.

Summary of Slot Machine History

In summary, coin-operated slot machines have had a rich 130-plus year history. Understanding how they have developed over time is useful to both you and I, and we gain useful insights into what may very well happen next. Or, at the least, we will be less surprised by what will become, eventually, yet more slot machine history.

Areas of existing slot machine history includes the key elements of technology, popularity, and the regulatory responses of state and federal governments.

The post began with Charles Fey in 1887, considered the 'Father of Slots' for his innovations and popularization efforts. Herbert Stephen Mills, known as the 'Henry Ford of Slot Machines,' quickly followed with his mass production efforts of early coin-operated slot machines. https://eng-torrent.mystrikingly.com/blog/slots-on-youtube.

This was followed by World War I, a time when slot machines began being mass produced around the world. This was shortly followed by American Prohibition, the 'Golden Age of Slots.' from 1920 to 1933 alongside Nevada legalizing gambling in 1931.

For decades afterwards, slot machine technologies were primarily developed by Bally Technologies, much later purchased by Scientific Games Corporation. These commonly known technologies include the random number generator as well as multiple pay lines and denominations.

This post concludes with the introduction of the computer microchips, the internet, off-shore online gaming, federal laws to protect players, rewards clubs, and the recent innovation of centralized computers being used to control slot machine odds in casinos.

Related Articles from Professor Slots

Other Articles from Professor Slots

• Previous: Slots Winning Strategy 7: Win, Walk Away, Return Later
• Next: Wendover Payout Returns over 100% on $25 Slots

Have fun, be safe, and make good choices!
By Jon H. Friedl, Jr. Ph.D., President
Jon Friedl, LLC

Take a look at any online slots site, and you'll find a stunning variety of games. From classic three-reel fruit machines to epic video slots with in-game bonus features and levels, slot machines have come a long way since their creation.

I decided to take a trip into slot machine history to find out who invented slot machines and how they developed over time. This post is a summary of what I found out. Slot machine fans, this post is for you.

The First Slot Machines

Have you ever wondered how slot machines got their name? It's actually a shorthand way to say nickel-in-the-slot machine, a testament to the old days when you slipped a nickel into the slot of a simple fruit machine.

By this definition, slots gaming pioneers invented the first machines in the 1880s. Bars and saloons in the Old West offered them. It involved punters dropping a coin in the slot to witness two toy horses racing or something similar. Punters wouldn't win anything for these games, but they would often bet with each other.

There were a few different iterations of slot machines, such as the machines developed by New York-based Sittman and Pitt. This game cost a nickel to play and had five drums which would show up. They awarded payouts for making poker hands with these cards.

In 1894, on the other side of the United States, a San Francisco-based inventor named Charles August Fey invented the first version of what we'd recognize as a classic slot machine.

Shortly after this, he built the 4-11-44, which was so successful that he quit his job to build them full time.

By 1898, Fey had created the first three-reel slot machine. These had automatic payouts built-in, with the coins falling out of the machine and into the tray below. He then built the Liberty Bell slot in 1899, which had bells, horseshoes, and other symbols of luck on the reels.

Slot Machines History and Evolution

Based on the history of early slot machines outlined above, we can say that Charles August Fey invented the first slot machine proper. However, I wanted to go deeper and learn more about how slot machines evolved and became what they are today. The following is a brief history of slot machines.

• By 1909, Fey's slot machines, and those created by his competitors has become such a success that they were banned. Moral forces such as the church petitioned for them to be banned, and in this year, the government of San Francisco capitulated to their demands. This caused slots production to shift to Chicago.
• During the Great Depression in the 1930s, the popularity of slot machines continued to grow. They spread far and wide across the United States.
• By 1951, slot machines were almost completely banned all across the United States. The exception was Nevada, with the boom-town of Las Vegas continuing to service gamblers from across the world. However, it was a well-known secret that slots still existed in private clubs all over the country.
• In the midst of financial need after World War II, governments across the world embraced slot machines. Why the sudden change in tune? You guessed it, tax revenue. With a newfound optimism and liberal attitude, and a need for taxes to rebuild from the rubble, the slots industry boomed like never before.
• Like most booms, this one produced a hyper-competitive environment in which developers created all sorts of new slot machines. Technology had advanced since the ban, and developers created new electronic slot machines with more complicated payout schemes.
• Video slot machines started to pop up in 1975, but surprisingly, they didn't succeed at first. It turns out that land-based slots players preferred to pull the handle and watch the reels spin in front of them.
• The first progressive jackpot slots came online in the mid-eighties. This was a watershed moment in the history of slot machines. Since then, jackpots have grown exponentially. In Las Vegas today, slots like Megabucks can pay tens of millions.
• In 1988, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act became law. This recognized tribal sovereignty and made it more difficult for states to enforce gambling bans on tribal lands. This led to the rapid expansion of the Native American gambling industry.
• In the early days of the 21^st century, casinos came under pressure from the rapid rise of online casinos. This, some would say uncoincidentally, led to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.
• Today, online slots are still illegal in the USA, but land-based machines are alive and well. Despite being illegal in America, lots of players from around the world play online slots at a rapidly growing number of online casinos.

5 Interesting Slot Machine Facts

1. Did you know that slot machines and other electronic gaming machines produce roughly 70% of profits for most casinos?
2. The largest slot machine payout in history occurred in 2003. A software engineer from Los Angeles won $39.7 million while playing the Megabucks slot in Las Vegas. The wager cost him $100.
3. A World War II veteran named Elmer Sherwin won two multimillion-dollar jackpots in his life. The first was a $4.6 million win in the Mirage on opening night, and the second was a $21 million win which occurred 16 years later.
4. A Chicago-based operator named Herbert Mills introduced the first slots with fruit symbols in 1907. Those symbols can still be found in lots of slot machines today. Any cultural meme created today would do extremely well if it lasted that long.
5. When the catastrophic San Francisco earthquake hit in 1906, most of the original Liberty Bell slot machines were destroyed. Only four survived, and today, any remaining antique slots are worth quite a bit more than a nickel!

Summary

Slot machines have come a heck of a long way since Charles Fey tinkered with the first Liberty Bell machines in his basement. He probably couldn't have even imagined how big his invention would become. The number of slot machines in existence today is innumerable. Tens of millions of machines are available in casinos, pubs, bars, cafes, and gaming halls across the world.

Slot machines will continue to evolve and change, and they won't escape the VR revolution.

First Slot Machine

Will we someday see a billion-dollar progressive jackpot? Right now, it's unthinkable, but I'll bet you that had you told Charles Fey that someone would win $39.7 million on a Vegas slot, he would have laughed in your face.

In the early 2010s, slot machine manufacturers introduced yet another revolutionary technological change: computer network connectivity. The most obvious change of this feature to slot machine appearance was replacing LED signs having single-color displays to multi-color LCD touch screens for the player reward system.

With these touch screens, and the associated connectivity to the casino's computer network, players are able to order drinks whenever desired without waiting for an attendant to appear nearby.

As a result, this connectivity allowed casinos to somewhat reduce their labor force of waiters and waitresses, again resulting in a corresponding increase in company profits.

Another technological change introduced recently has been the ability of the player to choose the value of each credit from a limited number of possible values. While this is a somewhat minor feature, it provides evidence of the slot machine gambling/gaming industry providing convenience to their customers as well as increasing company profits.

The labor force of slot technicians was reduced again, as this higher level of connectivity to slot machines allowed casinos fully eliminate one role of their slot machine attendants – the relatively time-consuming task of physically updating the payout odds on each and every individual machine.

Technicians still service slot machines for both planned and unplanned maintenance, but each machine's network connection to a computer hub now finely controls the payout odds of slot machines.

The consequences of this change in payout odds being finely controlled by the casino are, in general, discussed in my posts on winning slots strategies.

In them, I explain how to 'beat' the algorithm used to improve playing odds from below the typical payout return percentage of 90-98%, i.e., losing money, to have effective odds over 100%, i.e., making money over time.

In other words, this latest technological innovation has turned slot machine gambling from a mostly luck-based game of chance, to a skill-based game.

Summary of Slot Machine History

In summary, coin-operated slot machines have had a rich 130-plus year history. Understanding how they have developed over time is useful to both you and I, and we gain useful insights into what may very well happen next. Or, at the least, we will be less surprised by what will become, eventually, yet more slot machine history.

Areas of existing slot machine history includes the key elements of technology, popularity, and the regulatory responses of state and federal governments.

The post began with Charles Fey in 1887, considered the 'Father of Slots' for his innovations and popularization efforts. Herbert Stephen Mills, known as the 'Henry Ford of Slot Machines,' quickly followed with his mass production efforts of early coin-operated slot machines. https://eng-torrent.mystrikingly.com/blog/slots-on-youtube.

This was followed by World War I, a time when slot machines began being mass produced around the world. This was shortly followed by American Prohibition, the 'Golden Age of Slots.' from 1920 to 1933 alongside Nevada legalizing gambling in 1931.

For decades afterwards, slot machine technologies were primarily developed by Bally Technologies, much later purchased by Scientific Games Corporation. These commonly known technologies include the random number generator as well as multiple pay lines and denominations.

This post concludes with the introduction of the computer microchips, the internet, off-shore online gaming, federal laws to protect players, rewards clubs, and the recent innovation of centralized computers being used to control slot machine odds in casinos.

Related Articles from Professor Slots

Other Articles from Professor Slots

• Previous: Slots Winning Strategy 7: Win, Walk Away, Return Later
• Next: Wendover Payout Returns over 100% on $25 Slots

Have fun, be safe, and make good choices!
By Jon H. Friedl, Jr. Ph.D., President
Jon Friedl, LLC

Take a look at any online slots site, and you'll find a stunning variety of games. From classic three-reel fruit machines to epic video slots with in-game bonus features and levels, slot machines have come a long way since their creation.

I decided to take a trip into slot machine history to find out who invented slot machines and how they developed over time. This post is a summary of what I found out. Slot machine fans, this post is for you.

The First Slot Machines

Have you ever wondered how slot machines got their name? It's actually a shorthand way to say nickel-in-the-slot machine, a testament to the old days when you slipped a nickel into the slot of a simple fruit machine.

By this definition, slots gaming pioneers invented the first machines in the 1880s. Bars and saloons in the Old West offered them. It involved punters dropping a coin in the slot to witness two toy horses racing or something similar. Punters wouldn't win anything for these games, but they would often bet with each other.

There were a few different iterations of slot machines, such as the machines developed by New York-based Sittman and Pitt. This game cost a nickel to play and had five drums which would show up. They awarded payouts for making poker hands with these cards.

In 1894, on the other side of the United States, a San Francisco-based inventor named Charles August Fey invented the first version of what we'd recognize as a classic slot machine.

Shortly after this, he built the 4-11-44, which was so successful that he quit his job to build them full time.

By 1898, Fey had created the first three-reel slot machine. These had automatic payouts built-in, with the coins falling out of the machine and into the tray below. He then built the Liberty Bell slot in 1899, which had bells, horseshoes, and other symbols of luck on the reels.

Slot Machines History and Evolution

Based on the history of early slot machines outlined above, we can say that Charles August Fey invented the first slot machine proper. However, I wanted to go deeper and learn more about how slot machines evolved and became what they are today. The following is a brief history of slot machines.

• By 1909, Fey's slot machines, and those created by his competitors has become such a success that they were banned. Moral forces such as the church petitioned for them to be banned, and in this year, the government of San Francisco capitulated to their demands. This caused slots production to shift to Chicago.
• During the Great Depression in the 1930s, the popularity of slot machines continued to grow. They spread far and wide across the United States.
• By 1951, slot machines were almost completely banned all across the United States. The exception was Nevada, with the boom-town of Las Vegas continuing to service gamblers from across the world. However, it was a well-known secret that slots still existed in private clubs all over the country.
• In the midst of financial need after World War II, governments across the world embraced slot machines. Why the sudden change in tune? You guessed it, tax revenue. With a newfound optimism and liberal attitude, and a need for taxes to rebuild from the rubble, the slots industry boomed like never before.
• Like most booms, this one produced a hyper-competitive environment in which developers created all sorts of new slot machines. Technology had advanced since the ban, and developers created new electronic slot machines with more complicated payout schemes.
• Video slot machines started to pop up in 1975, but surprisingly, they didn't succeed at first. It turns out that land-based slots players preferred to pull the handle and watch the reels spin in front of them.
• The first progressive jackpot slots came online in the mid-eighties. This was a watershed moment in the history of slot machines. Since then, jackpots have grown exponentially. In Las Vegas today, slots like Megabucks can pay tens of millions.
• In 1988, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act became law. This recognized tribal sovereignty and made it more difficult for states to enforce gambling bans on tribal lands. This led to the rapid expansion of the Native American gambling industry.
• In the early days of the 21^st century, casinos came under pressure from the rapid rise of online casinos. This, some would say uncoincidentally, led to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.
• Today, online slots are still illegal in the USA, but land-based machines are alive and well. Despite being illegal in America, lots of players from around the world play online slots at a rapidly growing number of online casinos.

5 Interesting Slot Machine Facts

1. Did you know that slot machines and other electronic gaming machines produce roughly 70% of profits for most casinos?
2. The largest slot machine payout in history occurred in 2003. A software engineer from Los Angeles won $39.7 million while playing the Megabucks slot in Las Vegas. The wager cost him $100.
3. A World War II veteran named Elmer Sherwin won two multimillion-dollar jackpots in his life. The first was a $4.6 million win in the Mirage on opening night, and the second was a $21 million win which occurred 16 years later.
4. A Chicago-based operator named Herbert Mills introduced the first slots with fruit symbols in 1907. Those symbols can still be found in lots of slot machines today. Any cultural meme created today would do extremely well if it lasted that long.
5. When the catastrophic San Francisco earthquake hit in 1906, most of the original Liberty Bell slot machines were destroyed. Only four survived, and today, any remaining antique slots are worth quite a bit more than a nickel!

Summary

Slot machines have come a heck of a long way since Charles Fey tinkered with the first Liberty Bell machines in his basement. He probably couldn't have even imagined how big his invention would become. The number of slot machines in existence today is innumerable. Tens of millions of machines are available in casinos, pubs, bars, cafes, and gaming halls across the world.

Slot machines will continue to evolve and change, and they won't escape the VR revolution.

First Slot Machine

Will we someday see a billion-dollar progressive jackpot? Right now, it's unthinkable, but I'll bet you that had you told Charles Fey that someone would win $39.7 million on a Vegas slot, he would have laughed in your face.

This has been the history of slot machines to date. Where we go from here is anyone's guess!