The History of Slot Machines

The first slot machine, 'Mills Liberty Bell', was invented in 1895, by Charles Fey, which had reels like the present ones. Instead of bars, they had actual playing cards, the king, queen, and jack. When one would win, a bill would ring.

Contemporary machines are still being designed on this machine. Older slot machines had only 20 different symbols. The latest models have more symbols and more reels. These new machines have computer memory to generate a random display from hundreds of symbols.

In 1910 a new slot machine was produced. It was named the 'Operation Bell', and it had fruit symbols. This was the precursor to many machines, some of which were named 'Fruit Mania'. The earlier slot machines weighed as much as 100 pounds. Even at that time, it is said that 30,000 machines were sold.

Wood machines replaced them 5 years later. Slot machines under went frequent changes, to make them less expensive, and easier to handle. The noises in the original machines were also reduced, and the next generation of machines brought double jackpots.

To add color and fun, a variety of machines with many names were released, including the 1931 Lion Head, War Eagle, and Roman Head and the 1933 Castle Front. The slot machines were now becoming modern.

In 1940s, Flamingo Hilton Hotel allowed slot machines onto their premises; even women were playing the games. The 1970s saw the first electronic video slot and during the 1980s, the first video poker machines arrived on the scene. By the 90s, casino floors were displaying a huge variety of these slot machines. With an advent of technology, online slot machines appeared on the Internet and they surfaced, almost as a natural development for the time. Amazingly, two thirds of revenue from all casinos in the world comes from the slots in US.

Currently, two types of online slot machines, progressive slots and the regular slots are what we now are familiar with. They are similar, but differ only by the jackpot. The jackpot in the progressive slots grows as you play the game, even as a percentage of wagers go to the jackpot, which can be millions of dollars. A carousel ties up all the progressive games, pulling out the data from each machine, so that the jackpot grows ensuring only a single machine to become the winner. The machines have penny, nickel, quarter, and even dollar slots.

If you choose to play the regular slots, there are several different types of machines available. Three reels, five reels, multi-line slot machines to name a few. The regular slots pays winning combinations according to the schedule listed on the machine itself. For example, if you get three Star symbols on the Mega Reels while betting maximum you win the Jackpot! The winning depends on the payout schedules. However, an important feature of the current slot machines is the random number generator (RNG) that ensures that the play is random and that the player receives a fair game and chance of winning.

Through history, slot games or slot machines have been very popular due to ease of play and the ‘fun’ element associated with it. It requires minimum strategy but yields some really good rewards.