The Evolution of the Slot Machine: From Classic to Modern

The humble slot machine is a game most people have some idea of, in that it is a machine with a random outcome on each spin. Pay a coin or two and you might win a prize or you might not, depending on what shows up on the reels.

But where did slot machines come from? How have they developed over time? No doubt there are still some chapters to come in this story, but let’s see what we know so far.

Charles Fey created the first true slot machine

In the late 1800s, Charles Fey came up with a machine that had three reels, each with an array of symbols on it. When the reels stopped, a prize would be paid if a successful matching combination appeared across them. The Liberty Bell machine, so called because it featured a bell on the front, also lent inspiration to the best prize, which came for getting three bells on the line.

Your prize is… some food?

The laws regarding online gambling are often contentious depending on where you live in the world. This isn’t new, though – in America, some states didn’t approve of the real machines either, and so owners got around that by offering food as a prize rather than cash.

Bally launched the first electromechanical game in the Sixties

The basics were in place years before this, but Money Honey was the first instance of a proper slot as we would know it today.

The next step would come many years later with the advent of the internet. While slots still sit inside real casinos today, there are many online versions of those same games, along with other titles that are original to the internet.

As time has gone on, online slots have continued apace. With 3D slots now familiar to many players, the next step might just be virtual reality slots. We have already seen some live dealer slot game alternatives available, so VR slots would be excellent to find online as well.

While the slot machine has come a long way since the early Liberty Bell machine, it seems clear that its history is nowhere near coming to its end.