Sunday 31 May 2020

History of Slot Machines

History of Slots
Slots are one of the most popular forms of gambling in the world.  In most casinos in Las Vegas for example, slot machines make up around 70% of their total income.  Progressive jackpot prizes alone including cars and million dollar prizes also makes them one of the biggest attractions for patrons at the casinos.
When Were Slot Machines Invented?
The first slot machine was invented in 1887 by Charles Fey in San Francisco, California.  Like many inventions, it was created as a means of creating a gambling machine for poker that was capable of making automatic payouts.  Because machine poker at the time contained an endless list of hands (e.g. full house, flush, two pair, straight) it was impossible to create automatic payouts.
In 1887 however, Fey invented a modern day machine which was far more simplistic in design.  Rather than pay out money for every hand that a patron was dealt, it used 3 spinning reels each with 5 symbols so that when specific symbols aligned on the pay line the jackpot was paid out.  The simplicity in addition to the higher prizes of slot machines made them increasingly popular in the US and beyond.
The first slot gambling machine that Fey invented, known as the "Liberty Bell", paid out 10 nickels when players won three liberty bells in a row. This was the top prize on the machine.
As the classic 3-reel games became more popular, other manufacturers began creating their own  1907, Herbert Mils in Chicago produced a model called "Operator Bell".  Many of these were soon install in saloons, bars, bowling alleys and stores across the US. In 1891, Sittman and Pitt produced a slot machine which contained 5 drums with a total of 50 card faces.  This was based on poker (i.e. slot poker) and similarly proved extremely popular.
Modern Day Slot Machines
The biggest problem with old fashioned, mechanised slot machines was that the payouts were limited because of how easily the prizes could be one.  On the classic 3-reel machine with 10 symbols on each reel, for example, the odds of winning the top prize was 1/1000.  This strictly limited the jackpot prize since they would be won too often by players.
This problem was overcome in 1963 however when the first fully electromechanical machine called "Money Honey" was made. From now on, the machines could include "weighted symbols" and special microprocessors which limited how often winning symbols would align on the pay line.  This reduced the probability of winning pay lines and allowed the vendors and casinos to massively increase the jackpots while increasing their profits.
Nowadays, online slots (fruit machines in the UK) also include special bonus rounds such as "Hold n Spin" and "Cascade", in addition to multiple pay-line, video slots and interactive slots games.

1 comment:

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