History of Slot Machines.

The slot machine has a universal appeal for the simple reason that it unlike any other gambling game as it requires no skill but still attains maximum thrill, it can also be played at the gamblers own pace and this is all due to a car mechanic from San Francisco. Charles Fey was that car mechanic, he invented a slot machine in his small workshop. Charles built a number of coin operated slot machines including the original three reel machine which is known as the 'liberty Bell' around 1894.

In 1907 the Mills Novelty Company went into business with Charles Fey and produced the 'Mills Liberty Bell', this was still based on Charles's original design , the three reel slots with Spades, Hearts and Diamonds and one cracked liberty bell around each reel. The machines that were first produced were made of cast iron but as time went on Mills decided to make the machines from wood which was not only cheaper but made the machines a lot lighter, as the cast iron machines weighed up to one-hundred pounds. This was not the only change that the Mills Novelty Company made to the machines. In 1910 the Mills Company made a variation to the Liberty Bell by changing the pictures on the reels from playing cards to pictures of fruit, along with this they also produced a much better coin neck entry, the Mills Company named the machine 'Operation Bell'. In the 1930's Mills changed the Slot Machine industry forever when they introduced machines with double jackpots. Mills also decided to make the machines more exciting and memorable in order to entice the players so they introduced a number of cabinet designs which were colourful and striking with each machine having its own theme. The first machine of this kind to be introduced was the Lion head around 193, later that year the War eagle was produced along with the Roman Head and later in 1933 the Castle Front. With the War Eagle machine a new coin accepter system was introduced so that the player could see the coin moving down the machine, this was also introduced as a security measure to check that no one was using slugs in the machines.

It was around the 1930's that the Slot Machine became extremely popular across America, with the 1940's seeing casino owner Bugsy Siegal putting Slot Machines in his casino the Flamingo Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas. Siegal saw that there was a need to entertain the wives and girlfriends of the high rolling players at the tables. The popularity of the machines began to increase and was soon raking in as much money, enough to rival that of the table games and by the time the mid 80's came about Slot Machines were practically on par with the revenue of the table games and by the 90's the machines has taken over in terms of revenue and would make up two-thirds of a casinos revenue.

The machine that Charles Fey had originally made had gone through a number of changes including the bell toll which sounded when a winning combination came up on the machine. The bell toll was soon dropped but was not completely lost as the toll was kept on today's machine for jackpot combinations. There are a wide variety of machines but what ever the machine the player will be presented with a number of choices, in terms of number or reels, the number of coins that can be played with at one time, the denomination of coins and either single or multi-player machines to choose from.