As we said before, slots have been popular for centuries now. How did it get started? Slot game history goes all the way back to the California Gold Rush, when a German immigrant built a machine with one payline and three reels – much like modern classic machines of today. You can still find slot machines that follow this scheme.
It looked like a fancy cash register – perched on clawfooted silver legs much like a bathtub of the time. It had one small handle that you would pull to spin the reels and an automatic payout slot. The inventor’s name was Charles Augustus Fey, and a memorial to him and his “Liberty Bell Slot Machine” still stands in San Francisco. Mind you, this is an official California State Park memorial plaque.
The Liberty Bell paid out only 50 cents maximum. It quickly became incredibly popular, and the inventor had a hard time keeping up with demand.
Today, the classic slot machines have symbols that are unmistakable – the plums, cherries, grapes, bar symbols and of course, liberty bells. How did those come to be? In the years of prohibition when gambling was illegal in the United States, people still gambled. A popular chewing gum company caught on to the trend and made a slot machine that would spit out gum, depending on what symbol you spun.
The gum came in “bars” and many fruity flavors. The rest is history. Today, although the classic “fruits” are still popular in casinos around the world as well as in every mobile casino there is, there are more complicated and amazing slot machines that have grabbed people’s imagination and continue to improve and evolve. The stories and new ideas behind them are thought of by the world’s most creative minds in the business of online gaming.
