Slot machines were invented in the 1880s by Charles Fey, a mechanic from San Francisco. The first slot machines needed an attendant to make the payout. In 1895 Fey created a slot machine that paid out coins, which became incredibly popular. He then went on to invent the ‘Liberty Bell’ in 1898, which was the most famous slot machine of the time. The first slot machines in the modern sense were invented by Bavarian-born American inventor Charles August Fey, at the time a mechanic in San Francisco, who. When were the first slot machines invented? Who invented the first slot machine? The first slot machine was invented in 1891 by Sittman and Pitt in New York. The machine was originally based on the game of poker and held over 50 card faces.

If you’ve ever been to a casino before, you’ll understand why slot machines are so popular. Even to this day after being invented way back in the 19^th century, they’re still one of the most popular casino games in the world. Some say about 30% of casino profits come from them alone . Available at land based casinos and online, they’re everywhere, and there are thousands of games to select from.

With a huge international appeal, people call these machines differently around the globe. For example, in Australia they call them “pokies”. The reason is because the symbols on the first machine were poker symbols. In England, some people call them “fruit machines” since a lot of the classic ones had fruit symbols on them. Regardless of the name, they’re a huge hit all over the globe and have come a long way over the years. With so much history in the making of these machines, we find it interesting to discuss the history of slot machines: invention, evolution & future. We’ll be focusing on topics such as who invented slot machines, the evolution as well as 3D slots.

Who Invented Slot Machines

As we get ready to discuss who invented slot machines, it’s important for us to mention that the dates we’re using are approximations. We’ll also be talking about a controversial subject on who was the first person to invent this machine.

In any case, it is clear that the early beginnings can be seen going back to the 19^th century. It is believed that Sitmann and Pitt from Brooklyn, New York came out with the first gambling machine back in 1891. This gambling machine isn’t the slot machine you’re probably used to, but is more similar to a poker machine, as the symbols are cards and the concept it poker. On the machine are 5 drums holding 50 cards faced down. Instead of pressing a button, the machine was equipped with a lever you would need to pull after placing money inside. Afterwards, the drums would spin the cards, and the object was to land a strong poker hand. The rewards from these machines were not automatic. Instead the prize could be something like a beer from the bar it was available at.

From the poker machine we discussed, many people believe the very first slot machine wasn’t invented until 1895 by a guy named Charles Fey in California. His machine (the Liberty Bell) is the original design having only three reels, but had the ability to trigger payouts automatically. Unlike the card based game that Sitmann and Pitt came out with, Fey’s machine included other symbols such as horseshoes and liberty bells. These symbols would need to line up in order to create a winning payout. His success with this machine design was so big that other competitors eventually copied him. With gaining popularity, people started calling it the one-armed bandit as the design featured a lever on the side. With much success, Fey ended up opening the Slot Machine Factory in 1896. Nowadays the original Liberty Bell machine cannot be played anymore, but can be found on display at the museum in Reno.

Evolution of Slot Machines

These gambling machines have come a long ways and have a pretty long history. Before we get ready to talk about the evolution of slot machines you should know by now that they were a lot different from the typical machine you’ll see at the casino today. With the launch of electronic machines, you don’t even have to pull the lever down to spin the reels anymore, but instead you can activate them by simply pressing a button. You’ll also notice that a majority of them now have 5 reels on them instead of the classic 3 that was first introduced. Speaking of all the changes, let’s go ahead and take a look at the evolution of them over the years.

• 1891 – The year Sitmann and Pitt invented the first gambling machine.
• 1895 – The year Charles Fey invented the first slot machine featuring automatic payouts and 3 reels. The biggest win from this machine back then was a whopping ten nickels and was called the Liberty Bell.
• 1907 – After slots were banned in 1902, a new machine came out by a man named Herbert Mills. This is where the first fruit symbols appeared on the reels, and instead of having cash prizes, the payout prizes were in the forms of sweets, such as chewing gum.
• 1963 – the first electromechanical machine was introduced by Bally. It was called Money Honey and the reels were electronic, however you still needed to pull the lever in order to spin the reels. It was also able to make automatic payouts for up to 500 coins. After a while, after gaining more popularity, the lever was removed from the machine and was replaced with a button.
• 1976 – was the year the very first video slot was invented. It was created in California by a company in Las Vegas called Fortune Coins. The original machine had a Sony television to display the videos on the machine and was first featured at the Hilton Hotel in Vegas. Not very long after the machine gained much success and was being spotted in almost every hotel on the Vegas strip.
• 1994 – the big year where the very first online casino introduced video slots. From that year onward, it’s been a huge success in the gaming industry and is being played by millions of people from all over the world, without having to go to a casino.
• 1996 – was the year the first video slot came out with a second screen of a bonus round. After a bonus round was activated, a new screen would appear with a bonus game for a chance to win more. These new machines also contributed about 70% of the income from casinos.
• 2012 – There was a study done in England concluding that the citizens there spent approximately 5 billion pounds on their video slots, both online and on the casino floors. Keep in mind, this study was done on just this country alone, so imagine how much more it would be if the study included the entire world.

3D Slots

From the very first gambling machine that came out in the 19^th century, to a whole new generation of 3D video slots. These 3D slots we created in order to make the video screen as much 3D as possible. These machines are available online and at land based casinos, and they do not require any special glasses, which is why the designers are trying to create the symbols and characters as life like as they can. The art on these slots are look so real sometimes it almost feels like their popping out at you. With the graphics being so well designed, there’s a lot of work that comes in place from the artists. These games are pretty similar to video slots except for the extremely high-quality graphics they have. The slots are very appealing. They’re the latest of the latest and a good indicator that the slot industry continues to advance and grow more each day.

After taking a look at the evolution of slot machines, it’s awesome to see how far they’ve come, and how they continue to progress. With technology continuing to evolve, and them still being very popular, there’s just no telling what could be introduced next. It’s amazing how such a simple machine became huge in the entertainment industry.

The story of the slot machine is one of intrigue, theft, controversy, and murder. Okay, not murder, but everything else. And it starts in Bavaria….

Augustinus Charles Fey was the youngest of sixteen children born in 1862 in the small village of Vohringen, Bavaria which sits at the edge of the Alps. Early on, he displayed an interest in mechanics, following his brothers’ footsteps and working in a farm tool factory in Munich. At fifteen, August hit the road (apparently fearful of his strict father and not wanting to serve in the military) and walked across Europe. He stopped in France for about three years, working as an intercom equipment manufacturer, and then made his way to a British shipyard (approximately 750 miles and an English channel away from home), where he settled down for five years as a nautical instrument maker.

Several years before, August’s uncle (his mother’s brother) had moved to and settled in New Jersey. The family received letters from him talking of fortune and the good life America provided. So, August saved his money and made the pilgrimage to the United States. He arrived in New Jersey and lived with his uncle’s family in Hoboken (the birth place of baseball), but quickly made the decision to try his hand out west in the “lawless” town of San Francisco. He arrived there approximately in 1884/1885 at around 23 years old, right when the city was attempting to change itself, for better and worse.

In 2013, maps of San Francisco were uncovered from the late 19th century. These maps showed numerous gambling halls, opium dens, and brothels dotting the city, with each vice-ridden location color-coded on the maps. Despite this, little was done at this time by the local government and police force about these illegal establishments.

In this environment, Fey used his skills as a mechanic and found a job at California Electric Works (later Western Electric, which went defunct in 1995). He worked as an instrument maker and while doing this befriended a German foreman, Theodore Holtz, who will come into this story again later. It was also about this time that he met Marie Christine Volkmar, the daughter of a cigar shop owner, with whom he fell in love with.

Unfortunately, he contracted consumption, aka tuberculosis (see: Why Tuberculosis was Called Consumption), and hit the road again, this time for warmer weather in Mexico. While there, his health did not improve, so he returned to San Fran, thinking if he was going to die, it might as well be near the woman he loved. He miraculously got better (potentially due to the controversial use of creosote, obtained through the distillation of tar) and married Marie in 1889. They would go on to have four children together. To top off the metamorphosis going on in his life, August Charles Fey changed his name to Charles Fey, reportedly because he hated being called “Gus.”

At this point, Fey began tinkering with creating and inventing his own mechanical devices. Always a fan of making money, he frequented the gambling halls of San Francisco and noticed the so-called “nickel-in-the-slot” machines that were rapidly becoming popular. These machines were much closer to vending machines than to what we think of slot machines today, dispensing cigars or drink tickets. These also usually required a human, the cigar shop owner or barkeep, to give you your prize. The most popular ones were the poker machines that would actually flip real playing cards on five reels, revealing the hand. The better the hand, the more drink/cigar tickets you earned. These types of machines were so ubiquitous that a San Francisco Daily News headline noted, “Fiveteen Hundred Swindling Machines in One City!”

In 1893, Fey thought he could make a better gambling machine. His work friend Theodore Holtz introduced him to another German who was working at California Electric Works, Gustav Friedrich Wilhelm Schultze. On August 8, 1893, Schultze had patented his own “coin-controlled apparatus,” called the “Horseshoe.” This was the first US patent issued for a gambling machine and was the first to somewhat resemble what we now know as a modern slot machine. In fact, some historians have argued that Schultz, not Fey, should be the one known as the “Thomas Edison of slot machines.” We will come back to that later. Either way, Fey was impressed and “inspired” by the Horseshoe and went to work on his own coin-controlled apparatus.

In 1894, Fey designed a version of the Horseshoe, quite simply the same machine, but with a better mechanical reel, and asked Holtz to be his equal business partner (and not Schultz.) Holtz agreed and they both quit their jobs at California Electric, setting up shop as “Holtz and Fey Electric Works” at 39 Stevenson Street. Purposefully, they positioned their shop close to Schultz’s shop, who had also quit his job to make gambling machines. This should have set up a rivalry, except for the fact that Holtz and Fey were also selling leftover parts to Schultz, presumably because Schultz had no clue that they were also making gambling machines and had essentially stolen his idea.

In any event, in the basement of his house in 1895, Fey completed his next mechanical wonder, an even more modified version of the Horseshoe he called the “4-11-44” in homage to a popular lottery game at the time called “Policy,” in which the rare winning sequence was 4-11-44.

This machine is one of the reasons so many give Fey the credit for inventing the slot machine. It was a three-disc floor machine and was unlike any other ever created because instead of spitting out tokens or slips, it had the ability to dispense actual coins. They put it in a local San Francisco saloon and it was a hit and a huge money maker. Fey and Holtz went to work producing more, but before they got very far, Fey, once again, went packing.

Fey sold his share of his company with Holtz to start his own company, Charles Fey & Company. (Holtz also founded his own company and called it “Novelty Machine Works”.)

In 1897, Fey further staked his claim as the “Thomas Edison of slot machines,” when he devised the Card Bell slot machine, a “three-reel, staggered-stop machine with automatic payout.” Essentially, what it did was stagger the stops – first one reel, then the second, and then the third – just like modern slot machines, creating suspense, drama, and excitement. At first, he used playing card symbols, but two years later, he replaced them with stars and bells and called it the “Liberty Bell” slot machine. With ten symbols on each reel and ten stops, it allowed for numerous combinations. It was unlike anything else on the market, including Schultz’s machines.

It should be noted here that, technically, slot machines at this time were illegal (though, most law officials rarely policed them). As such, even though Schultz was awarded a patent in 1893 for his machine, when he tried to sue Holtz (he did name several other defendants in his documents, including Fey, but Holtz was the main defendant), the courts ruled that the patent didn’t protect him because a gambling machine was illegal. Because of this, the gambling and slot machine industry, from then on, was a bit like the wild wild west – ideas, designs, and concepts were stolen right and left.

As for Fey, he never patented any of his machines nor sold or leased them. He would operate them himself by making agreements with the proprietors (bars, cigar shops, etc.) for a 50/50 split of the profits.

In the end, Fey’s machines were a hit and became the “the largest slot operation in the country during the early 1900s.”

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Bonus Facts:

• In 1906, one of Fey’s machines went missing from a Powell Street saloon. It later turned up at the Chicago factory of the Mills Novelty Company, one of Fey’s major competitors. They had pulled it apart, to see why it was making more money than any of their machines. They figured out that, due to only three symbols being visible to the player, the suspense created enticed more “customers.” So, they created their own slot machine – calling it the Mills Liberty Bell slots. Yeah, not even really changing the name. Yet Fey could do nothing – he never patented it and even if he did, the courts would rule that they couldn’t protect it anyway.
• In 2006, the Nevada State Museum acquired many of Fey’s old slot machines, photographs, and memorabilia from his grandsons. They were previously at the Liberty Belle Restaurant and Saloon in Reno, before the establishment closed. Buying it at under appraised value, the collection is “one of the finest slot machine collections in the world.”
• Around the time Fey was arriving in San Francisco, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was enacted, curtailing Chinese immigration tremendously in San Fran, from 40,000 people arriving in the city in 1881 to ten (yup, just ten) in 1887.

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• Image via Vlada Z / Shutterstock.com

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