History of Slots
Slots are some of the most famous casino games in the world, and they are not new to the market. Their history is more than a century old, beginning in 1887 when an American mechanic named Charles Fey was credited for the invention of the first slot machine. Fey’s slot machine had three reels, each having five symbols over it; these were spades, diamonds, horse shoes, diamonds, hearts and the Liberty Bell. The liberty bells, if appeared in a combination of three, gave the highest payout of all, so the machine was called a Liberty Bell.
California was Fey’s home state and gambling got banned in it soon after the Liberty Bell became famous, but Fey could still not meet up the day by day growing demand for the slot machine from other states.
Soon this idea of slot machine was being taken up by other people and modifications were out in the market. Sittman and Pitt from New York developed a five reel slot machine with 50 card faces, and number of poker combinations to pay out for each win. This type of slot machine was developed in 1891 and is generally thought to be the basis for the modern slot machines.
However, in 1963 the first fully electromechanical slot machine was developed by Bally manufacturing and it could pay out around 500 coins and needed no attendant to assist the player in collecting the winning payout. This slot machine was known as Money-Honey.
Technological advances in the development of slot machines have pushed the developers in devising more paylines for one game, with modern day machines have more paylines varying from 9 to 50. Others have totally abandoned paylines and use more than 243 ways of winning.
Slot machines are the major game of casinos these days both in terms of number, floor space and the revenue they generate. As slot games are now available online as well, the problem of space is no more and online casinos can stock hundreds of different types of slots. With the diversity and increasing demand, slot developers are adding additional slots with great themes, bonus games and coin sizes.