Slots History

The year was 1891, the place was Brooklyn New York. Two people by the names of Sittman and Pitt developed a game in which 50 card faces were placed in five separate drums. The player would insert a nickel into the side and press a lever that spins the drums. The object was to get a good poker hand when the drums stopped spinning. This early version of slots was very popular in bars and instead of winning money players won free beer or cigars.

Not long after 1891, a San Francisco born man by the name of Charles Fey developed the first “one arm bandit” slot machine. The year was in 1895. He created three spinning wheels that each had five symbols. This made it easier to automate the game in order to give automatic payouts because it was much simpler to read whether or not a player won.

The biggest payout the machine offered was ten nickels. This game of slots became so popular that Fey was unable to keep up with demand. The second most popular slots game was a machine which had pictures of fruit flavors as the symbols on three wheels. In fact, the “BAR” symbol which is now a popular symbol seen in the slots today came from the logo of the company that created the fruit flavored slots machine. The company was called the Bell-Fruit Gum Company. The first slot machine that was fully electronic was a game called Money Honey that was created in 1964. Slots have been an intensely popular gambling game in the United States since its origin. Thanks to the technological advances of the internet we are now able to take slots to the next level and play a computerized version online.