Slots history: slot machines take the next step

The original slot machine of inventor Charles Fey's design certainly was efficient when it came to automated payouts, but there was another story concerning the 50 cents that were paid out by those pioneering machines. There's no doubt that the purveyors of this new form of entertainment had to watch their back, to say the least.

They did not take long to catch on, gaining quick favor in many saloons and restaurants; the "hospitality industry" of the time. But no one said that they were legal. Fey's slot machine was the first gaming device to pay off in coins, and that was something the customers no doubt enjoyed. However, there was a little deception that had to be played, because the gaming laws prohibited cash transactions like that from happening. In most cases, it was advertised that the slot winners would be paid off in drinks, but were actually paid off in coins.

As the slot machine evolved, its popularity obviously grew. And with it, the games became more sophisticated with the increasing public that it was servicing.

The influence of Fey's "Liberty Bell" slot machine can still be seen - that game was essentially the forerunner to all slot machines that came after it. But the machines, and the game of slots, continued to evolve over time. And things snowballed, because there were more and better payouts for players.

Originally, the Liberty Bell machine had ten symbols on each of its three reels. This made for a total of a thousand combinations. The total payout on all of the various possible winning combinations was 750 coins, which left a 25% margin for the house.

In 1907, Fey got together with the Mills Novelty Company and the result was the Mills Liberty Bell, which led to widespread distribution of the devices. Fey always retained rights to the manufacturing of the machine, but it was not possible to obtain a patent to protect the design of a gaming device. There was a second machine coming from Mills in 1910 - the "Operator Bell," which fundamentals differences in format, payout, and appearance.

For one thing, they had the now-familiar "goose neck" through which the coins would be entered into the machine. Another thing that was probably even more significant was that the Operator Bell doubled the number of symbols that were on each reel; where Fey's original had ten, this one had twenty.

This changed and expanded the whole ballgame, because that increased the number of possible combinations that could be made to 8000. Of course, this increased the potential jackpot payoff to the player as well.

Yet another reason the Operator Bell was and easy one - it was the first slot machine that used fruit for symbols, thus starting a tradition that still continues to this day, to the extent that in the United Kingdom the machines are commonly known as "fruit machines."

There were well over 30,000 of them manufactured, and so the Operator Bell slot machine was by far the most popular and important of the whole era, and it naturally spearheaded the evolution that led slot machines to a new level further down the road.