History of Slot Machines
The classic slots
The history of slots machine can be traced back to 1891. During this period, Sittman and Pitt, who were residents of east coast of New York City, came up with a machine that became the precursor of modern slot machines. The classic machine was mainly based on poker to get cash from the game popularity. The machine has fifty cards and proved to be a hit in the gaming world. The main setback for the machine was that it lacked a direct payment method. To address the problem of payment, Charles Augustus Fey devised a solution by coming up with different combinations that replaced the ten cards with 5 symbols (spades, diamonds, liberty bells, and horseshoes). In addition, he adopted three reels to replace five drums in order to reduce complexity of reading wins. In the subsequent half decade, the liberty bell was invented. This version was using an alternated STAR symbol and had a maximum prize of 20 tokens that clients could achieve using a 3 bell combination. By the first decade of the 20th century, slot machines were available literary everywhere. However, early and mid 1930s saw the slot machines adopt a better and lovelier design of wood which was a big break from the previous dominant cast iron. The new sets also came with new themes such as War Eagle, Roman Head, and Castle Front.
The modern slot machines
The slot machines designer and manufacturer, Bally Inc, started producing new machines commonly known as Money Honey. The new machines were run on electric power and came with new effects. This was the pioneer slot machine to come with a hopper. Other innovations came from the Bally’s design and by 1970; a hopper that was large enough to accommodate a dollar coin was released to the market to cater for larger jackpots. New reels were added to reduce chances of winning and raising the jackpot size. On top of adding the symbol numbers to each reel, 25 became the ultimate maximum. The wages to play were also raised from US $ 5 to US $ 25 and even up to US $ 100. Inge Telnus is the latest computer program being used to increase the jackpot size by utilizing a random number generated by imaginary reels. This has gone a long way in taking the machines to a new level and even opened additional marketing opportunities.
