Story of the Slot Machine

In my opinion slots is a curse of modern casino. Alongside with such games as poker, roulette, blackjack, that by the right it is possible to name Classical Gamblings, slots seems to me defective, not noteworthy. Nevertheless according to statistics 50 % of the income of a casino receives from them. So in several following posts I would like to mention slots theme.

History

In 1894, Charles Fey, a San Francisco inventor, designed a mechanized reel machine he called a slot machine. This first of its kind he named the Liberty Bell. The machine featured three metal reels with an number of matching symbols including a Liberty Bell along the outer edges of the reels. A lever spun the reels when pulled.

Early Twentieth Century

During the early 1900s, the Mills Company of Chicago manufactured thousands of the new slot machines. Their cases were made from cast iron and wood. A bell was added to signal when the machine’s reels matched. By the 1930s the machines were being painted in brighter and more daring colors and designed around whimsical or social themes of the day. The brighter and more flamboyant or patriotic, the more attractive the games were. The machine cabinets were changed to wood, too, a more economical material.

Las Vegas

In the 1940s, Bugsy Segal decided to add the popular machines to his Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Though he intended the slots to be trivial entertainment, Segal soon observed they attracted many more gamblers than he had expected. Unexpectedly, slot machines took over the casinos. Casino owners added increasing numbers of them until they far outnumbered the other traditional casino games.
The machines were bright and lively, inexpensive and easy to use. Besides the ease of use, the slots occasionally paid out with crowd-pleasing showers of coins.
Slot machines did not change much during the middle of the twentieth century. They continued to draw millions to casinos. Famous legends surrounded their mysterious operation and elusive pay outs.

Electronic Era

There was another marked rise in popularity again, in the 1990s. During this time many of the slots changed to electronic, or software-based, if they had not already. Electronic machines replaced levers with push buttons and touch screens, but the reels remained. The machines have grown in sophistication, too. Manufacturers, bent on engaging customers, have added more reels and programmed various machines to pay out across multiple lines. There are also progressive slots. Progressive machines nurture a bigger jackpot as play goes on. Attractive though these may be, big jackpots are infrequent.

The Myth of Slots

Over the years, supposed experts have claimed to hold the secret to winning at slots. Slot machines, though, are exclusively marketed as games of chance and luck. Electronic machines operate with a random number generator, a complex computer algorithm that continually is designed to pluck numbers out of thin cyber-air.