Pharaohs, gold, scarabs, and the eye of Ra are slot symbols that we love to see. But with so many Egyptian slot machines, are these games as old as Ancient Egypt? Were the ancient people playing massive slot machines next to the pyramids? We will explore the history of slot machines together and find out the truth!
Who invented the slot machines?
I hate breaking it for you, but the slots are a modern invention. The creator of the slot machines is August Fey a.k.a. Charles Fey. Charles Fey was born with the name August Fey in 1862 in Lothringen in the Kingdom of Bavaria, nowadays Germany. He was one of fifteen siblings! His parents were quite a hot couple!
As you can imagine, such a full house requires everybody to work. When he was just fourteen, little August started working for a farming tool manufacturer, where he gained skills in working with different tools. There, he became interested in mechanics and how machines work.
Since Charles Fey was living in the 19th century, nobody cared about passports, visas, and work permits, and he was still a teen (fifteen years old), he went to work for a while in France. Some say that he did that move to evade being drafted into the army of the German Reich, but let’s not throw mud at our guy’s face, and let’s say it was because of opportunities. He spent 3 years there, and thanks to a recommendation from his employer, he went to work in England after that. There, he worked in the British shipyard department and learned the English language there. He was getting new skills, saving some money, and looking forward to more adventures.
When he felt experienced enough at 23, he got on a ship and went to the United States of America!
Can you imagine him, some handy dude, getting his tools on a boat like Titanic and heading to the new world? Yes, the old days were quite exciting.
Arriving in New York, he stayed with his uncle in New Jersey for a while.
If you remember the movie Gangs of New York starring Leonardo DiCaprio, you will remember that New York was not the best place to be during the 19th century. I would argue that it is still not a good place, but this is another topic. Fey also thought that all the violence was too much for him and went around the USA looking for a better place.
He went all around the country and finally settled in San Francisco, California. Finally in the city, where the history of slot machines began. San Francisco was an innovation hub at the time. The Transcontinental Railroad connected the city in 1869, electric streetcars and cable cars were revolutionizing the streets, and the sheer number of immigrants and prospectors was amazing. The city was boiling with life! And also, the climate was a lot nicer than New York’s. So there, in 1885, Mr. Fey started working at the Western Electric Works company. Around this time, he changed his name from August Fey to Charles Fey. Do you want to know why? Because he didn’t like the short version of his name at all – “Gus”.
Our hero was a very handyman. He quickly learned the ways of electricity and later left the company to start his own one about electrical equipment and telephones with his buddy Theodor Holtz near Gustav Friedrich Willhelm Schultze’s workshop.
So, when the team formed, they quickly focused their efforts on the slot machines. Back in the 1880s, there were some mechanical devices that worked with nickels, but the concept was not developed enough. At that time, the devices were far more related to the vending machines, than the modern slot machines.
Horseshoe Slot Machine
In 1893, his friend Gustav Friedrich Willhelm Schultze was awarded a patent, for his Horseshoe Slot Machine. It was the first modern slot machine with an automatic payout mechanism. It was the first ever patented slot machine. So, why are we not celebrating Gustav’s invention as the beginning of the history of slot machines and focusing on Charles Fey? That is a very good question. It looks like you are truly following the story here. The thing is, the invention of Mr. Schultze was far more similar to a video poker machine than a slot machine, that you know. The Horseshoe Slot Machine, also known as the Card Bell, had a 5-drum mechanism (reels) which were displaying different sets of playing cards. The idea was to form a winning poker hand of 5 cards. When the players pulled the lever, the drums would spin until they finally stopped randomly and showed a combination of cards. Based on the outcome, pair, three-of-a-kind, four-of-a-kind, full house, straight, flush, etc., there was an automatic payout mechanism, which was super innovative at the time.
Liberty Bell Slot Machine
Charles Fey used his friend’s invention, the Horse Slot Machine as inspiration to create the first every modern slot machine in 1895 – the Liberty Bell. Charles used many of the key new features, that Gustav introduced such as the level mechanism, the automatic payout, familiar game symbols, and more. The big difference was that it used just 3 reels, which became the standard for the future slot machines.
The machine used the following symbols: Hearts, Spades, Diamonds, Starts, Horseshoes, and, of course, the Liberty Bell, which gave it its name. The Liberty Bell symbol was the one that was giving the biggest payout. How much do you think was the biggest payout if you get 3 Liberty Bell symbols in a roll? $10,000, $20,000, or maybe $100,000? No! If you get the best combination, you could be a proud winner of 50 cents! Yep, not a lot. Even if you calculate the future value (FV=PV×(1+rate)/years), you will still get something like $20 in today’s money. Back then, these games were just a little bit of fun, not life-changing devices.
The first slot machine was a total success. Fey continued to create Liberty Bell Slot Machines in his San Francisco workshop for a long time. Many saw his success and started imitating it. Copies of the original one started emerging on the market. One that is worth mentioning was created by Mills Novelty Company. It was called Operator Bell, which clearly shows the similarity with the original Liberty Bell of Charles Fey. It was created in 1907, and it used a lot of the design elements of the first slot machine, but Mills Novelty Company had a broader distribution, which helped in its popularity. Mills Novelty Company distributed its slots in barbershops, cigar stores, and even brothels!
Where did the fruit symbols come from?
So, so far we are seeing mostly card symbols. What about the fruits? That is a curious stage of the history of slot machines. Thanks to the massive popularity of the early slot machines, the government decided to ban them. Yes, the government often know the best ways to stop the fun.
The local government in San Francisco, used the horrible earthquake of 1906, which destroyed a big part of the city, including the workshop of Fey, as a sign that it was time to stop the slot industry.
So, the government banned the cash prizes to stop the gambling problem that was on the rise.
This time, the Mills Novelty Company (MNC) took the initiative. Fey managed to rise again its workshop, but he never managed to scale up.
The MNC had the brilliant idea to offer non-cash prizes! To be more specific, bubble gums and candies. They often had fruity flavors, so the MNC decided to make fruits like cherries, lemons, oranges, and plums, so if you get a payline with them, you get the exact fruity taste.
People loved playing slots already, and even a simple bubble gum was enough dopamine to keep them entertained. At around that time, other companies started experimenting with other non-cash prizes. The first Claw games appeared around that time. You know the Claw games, right? Those annoying coin machines that have very weak claws, and you spend countless coins to win an ugly Teddy bear.
At the time, during the first part of the 20th century, the machines were 100% mechanics. No electricity whatsoever. There were barely any electric streetlights at this time. The next big thing was the electrical slot machine.
Money Honey Slot machine, the first electromechanical slot machine.
Let’s jump 30-ish years into the future. We are now in 1963. On the radio, you can hear The Beach Boys – Surfing’ USA and The Ronettes – Be My Baby. In the cinema, you can see 007, From Russia with Love. My namesake, Martin Luther King Jr, just gave a very cool speech called “I have a dream”.
Quite an exciting time! Then, the Bally Manufacturing Corporation was working on its next creation, Money Honey. It took a while, and in 1964, Bally Manufacturing Corporation introduced the Money Honey Slot Machine. That was the first electromechanical slot machine. It kept the lever that players pulled to spin the reels, but there was already an electric motor, light, and opportunity to win up to 200 coins! If you get 3 “honeys” (symbols of blond women), you could get the massive jackpot that was possible thanks to the Hopper System for storing and dispensing a large number of coins.
The increased jackpot and the new mechanics attracted big crowds. Soon the competition started to catch up and the next innovation was ready the video slots!
The first video slot – the Fortune Coin slot machine
The first video slot, the Fortune Coin, was created in 1976. A time of disco music, where the Bee Gees, Donna Summer, and KC and the Sunshine Band were topping the charts. Rock was also strong. The Hotel California” by the Eagles was just released!
In this context, Walt Fraley and his company Fortune Coin Co. introduced a slot machine with a video display. A 19-inch Sony Trinitron color screen! It also had a microchip inside, so finally, the slots were becoming 100% digital, leaving the mechanics in the past. Thanks to the digital change, this slot paved the way for new features like multiple paylines, bonus features, animated graphics, and more.
If you see it today, you will feel like it is super outdated, but back then 19-inch CRT screen, instead of the traditional reels was the top of the technology.
The first progressive jackpot – Megabucks slot
In 1986, there was a new invention – the progressive jackpot! Suddenly, the possibility of changing your life in a moment became a reality thanks to the Megabucks slot by International Game Technology (IGT). Every time a player didn’t win, a part of the money was going towards a big jackpot called the progressive jackpot. Since its introduction, the Megabucks slots have been giving some small prices, but the first really big jackpot was won in 1987. Then, the lucky winner got the massive prize of $4,988,842.17!
The first slot with a bonus round – Reel ‘Em
The marketing departments of the slot companies didn’t stay quiet for long. If that was the case, the history of slots would be very short. In 1996, the WMS Industry introduced the Reel ‘Em slot. The first slot machine with a bonus round. There was a dedicated second screen that added extra excitement to the game and an additional way to win some more money.
It was a total success, and thanks to that machine, you can see bonus rounds in many online slots too.
The online revolution
The 90s were a time of quick computer progress. New and more powerful devices were coming each year, and there was a new cool thing called the Internet. Suddenly, it opened doors to many new worlds. Just like AI is doing now, it has created a massive change. Although it was still a largely unregulated territory, the casinos wanted to jump on board on the Internet. The first online casinos started popping up like mushrooms after rain. It was mostly illegal, but people didn’t care that much at the time. Thanks to the hidden nature of these initial Internet casinos, we cannot pinpoint which was the first online casino, but it was somewhere around 1994-1995. Some of the big names of the time were Cryptologic and Microgaming. The first-ever online slot game is considered to be Cash Splash, created by Microgaming.
Since then, the online slots have been getting better constantly, but they are also getting a bit more complicated. If you want to be on top of the game and know everything about online slots, check out our “Online Slots Guide for Beginners”.
The mobile slots
The most natural advance from the online casinos to the mobile casinos started in the early 2000s. Back then, we were only able to play simple Java-based phone games. This was before the smartphone boom. There were some Nokia smartphones at the time, running Symbian OS, but they were expensive.
The first mobile casino was created by Microgaming in 2004. It was Java-based, so it could run on most of the mobile phones of the time. It offered mobile slots, table games, and video poker games. The interface of the time was optimized to be used with the phones’ buttons. The touch screens were not a popular thing at the time. Can you believe it?!
Other companies that started creating mobile slots early are Playtech and Noten. You can see that they have advanced a lot and now are one of the top game producers in the gambling industry.
It took a long time, until the mobile phones became truly “smart” and powerful. The first iPhone was launched in 2007 and the first Android phone (HTC Dream) was launched 2008, but they were not instant success. It took at least a few more years to become good.
So, the modern mobile slots that you can imagine started appearing around 10 years ago. The devices were powerful enough to run heavier games, with more effects, 3D elements, and additional bonus games. The devices started to support multi-touch input, and the apps were stated to be available on Google Play (Android casinos) and Apple App Store (iOS casinos).
Now we have a mature mobile slot market, where you can easily find high-quality apps, that are secure and can easily rival the online slots in every way.
That is great, but what’s next?
What’s next? New VR slots, AR slots, and even AI slots might be just around the corner.
VR slots – virtual reality slots
The first VR slot was the Jack and the Beanstalk VR by NetEnt. It uses the VR capability to create an experience like a live casino. You put the VR device and you immediately feel like you are physically next to a slot machine. This happened back in 2016, so the graphics weren’t great. Now the current VR slot games are better, yet they are still behind other platforms.
AR slots – augmented reality slots
Sadly, there are no popular AR slots on the market right now, but wouldn’t it be great? Imagine if you have an AR device and you play AR slots that will not only entertain you with the physical game on the slot device but will also be able to add special effects and make the whole experience 360. It could add a lot of extra features like bonus games, animations, and even storytelling to the traditional slot experience. I would love to try an AR slot, hope somebody important is reading this. Do it now!
AI slots – artificial intelligence slots
Everything is AI now, so soon, it will be inside the slot device, too. Honestly, it gives me the creeps. Imagine an AI slot that knows you better than you know yourself and offers you a personalized gaming experience. Personalized bonuses and additional bonus games. What if the AI slot speaks to you in Scarlett Johansson’s voice? Do you see where I am going with this? I am a simple man, so one AI, a billion times more intelligent than me, having the goal to take my money scares me. Hey, but that is just me. I am not against the technology advancement, but I would prefer VR or AR slots with simple gameplay instead.
For me, there are clear reasons why we love slots, and AI is not one of them.
Final words
I hope you enjoyed our trip down the slot machines’ memory lane. Sure, they came a long way from a simple mechanical device, working with 5-cent coins to modern online slots with multiple pay lines and progressive jackpots. Now, they are the crown jewel of each casino. If you are also a big fan of online slots, we would like to recommend some awesome sites for online gambling. Let the luck be with you!
Sources:
- https://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/entries/charles-august-fey/
- https://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/documents/gustav-friedrich-wilhelm-schultze-patent-for-a-coin-controlled-apparatus/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fey
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_machine
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_jackpot