1: History of Slot Machines
This is the first installment of “Lotsa Slots – How To Play Slots” which can be downloaded for free from bigmcasino.com.
Although the technology of today’s slot machines are quite impressive, slots have actually been around for over a century.
It all began in the 1890’s…when a man named Charles Fey from San Francisco, CA conceived of a poker machine with an automatic payout mechanism.
However, poker was very complex. With so many ways to win in a game of poker, it was nearly impossible to make a machine capable of creating an automatic payout for all the winning combinations.
Instead, Fey devised a machine with three spinning reels. They contained a total of five symbols, including horseshoes, diamonds, spades, hearts, and a Liberty Bell (which also gave the machine its name).
By replacing ten cards with five symbols and using three reels instead of five drums, the complexity of reading a win was considerably reduced, allowing Fey to devise an effective automatic payout mechanism.
Three bells in a row produced the biggest payoff, which was only ten nickels….
