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Slots History
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John Grochowski recounts the story of the very first slot
machine, the Liberty Bell
by John Grochowski
Let’s go back in time, to the late 1800s. There was gambling then, of course.
There seemingly always have been games of chance. Sheep’s knuckles fashioned
into dice have been found at sites dating to the Roman Empire.
But we’re not going that far back. We’re going only to the beginnings of slot
machines. And in the late 1800s, there were a proliferation of coin-operated
gaming devices. There were machines that used cards as symbols, and machines
with huge vertical color wheels, in which you’d bet your money on which color
the wheel would stop. Finally, in the late 1890s, there was the Liberty Bell.
Developed by Charles Fey in San Francisco, the Liberty Bell was where slot machines,
as we know them begin. Whether you’re playing online or offline, with three
spinning reels or with five on a video screen, the Liberty Bell is where the
games we play today begin.
If you were to see a Liberty Bell machine today - and there are a few
still in existence - the first thing you’d think would be “slot machine.”
There would be no wondering what this old device was about. It’s instantly recognizable
as the type specimen of the games we play today.
Fey’s creation was the first recognizably modern slot. Symbols on its three
spinning reels included horseshoes, stars, spades, diamonds, hearts and bells.
It was so popular that for a time all three-reel slots were referred to as ``Bell
machines.''
And while it was the first of the modern slots, the Liberty Bell was not the
first of the Bell machines. Fey had an earlier creation, the Card Bell. It was
a gaming device, too, but it didn’t use horseshoes, stars, bells and such. It
used pictures of playing cards as its winning symbols. It was popular, but it
was the Liberty Bell that captured the imaginations of the first generation
of slot machine fans.
With a casing made of sheet metal on a brass frame, the Liberty Bell was durable
and attractive. There was no neon, flashing lights or sound effects, but it
was a game that was played by dropping a coin in the slot and pulling the handle
to start the reels, just as players have been doing for more than a century.
Yes, today it’s often a push of the button or a click of the mouse that starts
those reels spinning, but the essentials of the game have been there since Fey
began it all in the 1890s.
Fey was a German immigrant with a background making instruments for electrical
supplies companies. He set up a workshop in his basement in Berkeley, Calif.,
and it was there that he created many early slot machines.
Other manufacturers quickly followed with their own versions, and slot machines
quickly spread through the United States, even in jurisdictions that didn’t permit
gambling. Many early slots were used as trade simulators by merchants, and paid
out golf balls, chewing gum, candy, cigars and more. If a merchant wanted to pay
out something more than golf balls to customers with winning spins - well, that
was between the merchant and the customer, if they could get the law to look the
other way.
One frequent prize listed on machines in saloons was free drinks. Some versions
of the Liberty Bell listed a pay table with a top jackpot of 20 free drinks
for three bells. Some poker machines paid as many as 100 free drinks for a royal
flush. That’s a lot of shots of Old Redeye.
Along the way, many of the symbols we still see on slot machines today came
into use and just stayed, even if the reasons for the symbols being there faded
with time. The fruit symbols still used on slot machines today come to us from
flavors of chewing gum dispensed by the Liberty Bell Gum Fruit slot made by
Herbert Mills in Chicago in 1910. Not all the gum symbols survived to modern
slot machine use--we see no current machines that use spearmint leaves as a
reel symbol.
Three-reel slot machines still frequently use bar symbols --- single bars, double
bars, triple bars. That comes by way of the Gum Fruit slot, too. The bar symbol
still in use today is identical to the Bell Fruit Gum logo used as a symbol
used on early slot machines. The only difference is that nowadays the white
lettering on the black bar says ``BAR,'' whereas it used to say ``BELL FRUIT
GUM.''
The bar also bears more than a passing resemblance to the Wrigley arrow still
used on packages of Spearmint and Doublemint gum. Some early slot machines dispensing
Wrigley's gum used the Wrigley arrow as a symbol.
You probably don’t think of Charles Fey or the Liberty Bell, of golf balls and
free drinks, of Fruit Gum and bar logos, when you play today. They’re present
nonetheless, a tradition that continues whenever the reels spin.
John Grochowski
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