A slotted history...

First man invented the wheel, he filled it in and he got the disc, he shrank it and made it out of metal giving us the first coins, and then of course after coins the slot machine was a no brainer... Well, it wasn't quite that romantic, with the first slot machines appearing in the states around the 1880s.

Charles Fey is widely accredited with the first slot machine created in 1887. Fey, an inventor who originally trained as a car mechanic, together with the Mills Novelty company came up with the Mills Novelty Bell, an early version of the slot machines we know and love today. The machine had three reels and five symbols with a whopping ten cent payout for the jackpot three bells in a row. The machine was of course based on the design which was to become known as the 'one-arm bandit', with a large lever situated on the side of the machine which the player would have to pull down in order to spin the reels.

There is some controversy around whether this was truly the first machine with a New York company, Sittman and Pitt creating a card based slot machine in 1892. This machine had five reels utilizing 50 of the deck of 52 playing cards with 2 cards removed. The machine would spin poker hands so the two cards usually removed were the 10 of Spades and the Jack of Hearts to make it harder for players to hit the top prize Royal Flush. This slot game was incredibly popular but had no way of paying out money so the owner of the machine would have to be alerted to the win on the reels and would then pay out in anything from cigars to bar tokens.

The 1960's saw the entry of the electric power into gambling technology with a machine called 21 by Nevada Electronic. It was also around this time we saw the first electronic slot, Bally's now famous 'Money Honey' machine which disposed of the mechanical crank to operate the reels and could pay out up to 500 coins without the need for an attendant.

The next step was the video slot machine which was first created by the Fortune Coin Company in 1974 created by Walt Freely. The machine was simple enough consisting of a coin hopper, a solid state computer and a video screen, however, gamblers were very slow to move to the new video slot as they had been used to seeing the reels crank round mechanically on every spin and they were now being asked to trust a virtual reel. At the same time Bally, with all their experience from the Money Honey machine had been adding reels to decrease winning odds so at the same time they could increase the jackpot the player had less and less chance of winning. Bally's big breakthrough came when they hired a computer programmer called Inge Telnaus who introduced random number generators across virtual reels. This process revolutionised slots when Telnaus realised that Bally could introduce massive jackpots as the combinations on virtual machines could be much larger than conventional physical reels.

There have been many smaller breakthroughs in slot machine technology since the 70's such as multiple win lines and the hybrid machines that have both the physical and video reels but the biggest revolution in slot machines in recent years has been the emergence of the online slot machine. Players over time have been turned off the dark and driven halls of casino slots and can now play the video slot machines that have been loved for so many years in the comfort of their own home bringing the world's most popular casino game to worldwide markets.