The History of Slot Machines

Slot games have come a long way in 100 years from the original mechanical Horse Shoe and Liberty Bell slots of the late 1800s. Now the same games can be played nearly anywhere on earth, provided you have an internet connection, whether it be at a computer or on your phone, you can connect to online casinos all over the world from the comfort of your own home, work or even on your travels.

What you might be surprised by is just how far slots have come; from their humble beginnings as light diversions for engineers in California, into the coin dispensing Horseshoe that eventually became the Liberty Bell, and led to a large amount of designs inspired by this excellent original. However, the law at the time meant that the designer of the Liberty Bell, Charles Fey, was unable to patent his design and this freedom to 'borrow' the idea led to a lot of amateur inventers producing derivatives.

It wasn't long until people realised the flaws in the mechanical design and found ways to stop the slots on the results they needed for an easy win. To combat this, in the 1970s, slots underwent a revolution which introduced the random number generator and a new version of the game powered by computers.

As these games developed, the RNG elements were easy enough to translate into an online game (it's the exact same as playing at the casino but from your own home) and the rest is history!

On the right is a graphic produced by UK online casino Betfair that goes through the history of slot machines, from Charles Fey's birthday in 1862 Germany, to the modern day where 70% of casino floors are now filled with slot machines, and their accessibility through internet-connected devices.