The history of slots actually started in the United States back during the early 1880's in the eastern US, but gained its popularity in San Francisco, California. These first slot machines used cards whereby fifty cards were placed on five drums. These machines became quite popular in saloons and cigar shops and by 1890 in San Francisco, they had 3,117 licensed establishments with these card machines.
The modern slots machines as we know them today were invented in 1899 in San Francisco by a Bavarian immigrant by the name of Charles Fey. This first slot machine that Charles Fey made was named the Liberty Bell and was shaped the same as the slot machines we have today.
The Liberty Bell came with three reels, a payout schedule, a coin acceptor and a large handle on the right side of the machine. The Liberty Bell became an instant success and the Holtz and Fey Electric Works became the major producer of slot machines in the whole of the United States.
Unfortunately for the Holtz and Fey Electric Works it all came to a sudden and abrupt end on April 18, 1906 when the San Francisco earthquake flattened their factory.
Another important person in the history of slot machines is Herbert Stephen Mill from Chicago who in 1909 modified the Fey machine. Mills added ten more symbols to each of the reels and made the machine more mobile and space saving.
This new machine was named the Mills Liberty Bell and it wasn't long before the Mills Liberty Bell began to grow their share of the market after Fey's Liberty Bell went down.
The next important change in the history of slots is the birth of the electronic slots machines. Changing over from mechanical to electronic games had its advantage as it was very easy to cheat the mechanical machines.
There were definite advantages to using the electronic slot games over the mechanical slots. The most important advantage was that players couldn't cheat on these new electronic games as they were able to on the mechanical machines.
Also with the electronic games the operators were able to offer bigger jackpots. With the mechanical slots they had limitations to their prizes having the physical limitation to make stops on the reels. With the new improved electronic slots the operators could make as many stops as they wanted.
The video slots were the next breakthrough in the history of slots with the first machines being introduced in 1975 in Las Vegas, Nevada. This first video slot machine was quite simple as it had only three components consisting of a solid state logic assembly, a television set and a hopper.
Unfortunately the popularity of these machines really never caught on until the introduction of the first video poker machines. Along with the popularity of the video poker machines grew the popularity of the video slots.
The next breakthrough in the history of slots was the introduction of the Megabucks; a 3 coin dollar progressive slot from International Games Technology. They started out with 125 machines in 9 casinos located around the state of Nevada. The advantage with the Megabucks slots were that they were all linked together and kept the same progressive meters.
Today we see in Las Vegas the popularity of the nickel machines which are coming from Australia. They are all video based machines that have multi-betting lines on them.
Also there is the ticket-in ticket out systems which is one of the latest technologies that is gaining attention from the industry. This is a great system allowing the players to move from machine to machine with a ticket instead of having to carry a heavy bucket full of coins. This system also saves the casinos by reducing labor costs and promising a more secure slot machine operation.
The easiest slot machine experience today however is still offered at casinos online where completely software based slot machines require nothing more from a player than a computer and internet access. As such the advent of internet based slots gaming has revolutionized the slots industry as it has done for almost all other gambling games.
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