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The First Modern-Day Slot Machine

Fans of online slot machines nowadays have become spoiled by the tens of thousands of options available to them. Not only can they chose from an untold number of fun and exciting these, but they can also pick from between penny, nickel, dime, quarter, or dollar slots; games with three or five reels, and titles offering many different numbers of paylines. Once upon a time, there was only one “flavor” of slot machine, but the popularity of this simple device kicked off what would become a century-plus of enthusiasm for this form of gambling.

In 1887, six years after Sittman and Pitt unveiled their five-drum poker machine, Charles Fey turned out a device with an automatic payout mechanism. The San Francisco-based inventor wanted to devise a slot machine that would automatically pay out a player’s winnings, but knew that the poker-based game so well-liked in New York had too many possible winning combinations to make this effective. So, Fey decided to make a machine with just three spinning reels (instead of five tumblers) with five symbols apiece – diamonds, hearts, horseshoes, spades, and Liberty Bell… the symbol that named the first contemporary slot machine. The biggest jackpot –ten nickels- was awarded for lining up three bells in a row.

Liberty Bell became a massive success. Fey couldn’t keep up with the demand for these slot machines, not even when he formed a company to manufacture them. Fey did not know at the time that he would be responsible for the birth of the mechanical gaming device industry, or the generations of slot machine addicts that would launch it to the success it enjoys today. Certainly, he could not have foretold the genesis of the online slots industry, which threatens to burgeon over even the land-based slot industry.

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