History of Slots
The famous game of slots dates all the way back to 1887, when in a small town of California, Charles Fey, a mechanic by profession, developed the very first game of slots. The idea was simple; the game consisted of three reels with five symbols on each reel; the spade, heart, horseshoe, diamond and of course the high-paying Liberty Bell. Since the Liberty Bell paid out the most, the machine was named Liberty Bell and it became very famous across America, so much so that even when gambling was banned in Fey’s home state of California, the demand for his machine continued rising.
As is the case with all other inventions and discoveries, Fey’s invention was soon adopted by other people and modified. The version that can be taken as a basis for the development of modern day slots was made in 1891 by Sittman and Pitt from New York. Sittman and Pitt’s slot machine consisted of five reels, and had 50 card slots with different poker combinations for giving payouts.
Another modification came after a lapse of quiet a few years in 1963, and was known as ‘Money Honey’. Developed by Bally, this version was completely electromechanical and did not require any attendant to provide payouts; rather it could give payouts of up to 500 coins by itself.
In 1976 video slots came as the latest modification in the series and they were further modified to make the game even more cheat proof. These became popular in Las Vegas casinos and are the ones you can still see on the casino floors to this very day.
As technology advanced and new changes were brought to slot machines, the number of active paylines also increased from 9 to 50. These days, there are many modified slots where the concept of paylines has been replaced by more than 243 ways of winning.
The slots take up the largest part of a casino; not only do they occupy most of the space but the colossal revenue they generate makes them a favorite for casinos as well as players. The shifting of slot games to the internet has opened up a new arena for many players and the number and the themes of the slots has also increased many fold as now the issue of physical space is not considered.