Slot machines – the main gambling draw in any casino – have been through significant changes since their inception in the late 19th century. The earliest ‘one-armed bandit’, invented in New York City, displayed poker hands and didn’t have a direct payout mechanism; nowadays, machines frequently employ video screen displays with multiple pay lines, and many have even lost their namesake arm.
slot machines
Though no one has been deemed “The Father of Slots”, the title should probably belong to Charles Fey, inventor of the original Liberty Bell machine. His design had three reels with two sets of five different symbols on each; the low number of possible combinations allowed for a simple automatic payback mechanism, with three liberty bells having the highest payout of fifty cents.
The early machine was very successful, but it would not have reached its potential had Fey not worked with the Mills Novelty Company in 1910 to mass produce a newer version, known as the ‘Operators Bell.’ When this was introduced, it increased the total number of symbols on the reels from ten to twenty and also replaced the earlier images of horseshoes and card suits to pictures of fruit. Over the next 25 years, slot machines gradually became more lightweight, more striking visually, and less noisy. Their popularity skyrocketed after Bugsy Siegel installed them in the Flamingo casino in Las Vegas.