History of Slot Machines and How they Work

What is a Slot Machine?

Slot machines are a type of casino game that are also referred to as fruit machines in British English and poker machines in Australian English. Traditional slot machines tend to be coin operated machines that have at least three reels that spin when a lever is pulled. Slot machines typically pay off based on a variety of different symbol patterns that are visible on the front of the machine. Today slot machines are easily the most popular of all gambling methods in casinos, constituting more than 70 percent of an average casino's income.

Brief History of Slot Machines

The first gambling machine, a precursor to our modern slot machine, was developed in 1891 by Sittman and Pitt from Brooklyn, New York. This gambling machine was based on poker, and had five drums that held fifty card faces. Players would insert a nickel and pull a lever, spinning the drums and the cards that they held. If the poker player got a good hand, he or she may win a free beer, cigars, or drinks, depending on the establishment hosting the gambling machine.

Many of today's [tag-self]slots[/tag-self] symbols were derived from another early machine, which gave out fruit flavored chewing gums, and the fruit symbols on the machines' reels were the flavors. The BAR symbol that is common in modern day slot machines came from an early logo from the Bell Fruit Gum Company.

The first fully electro-mechanical slot machine was invented in 1964 by Bally. This machine, called the Money Honey, was the first machine that offered a bottomless hopper and an automatic payment function that could pay out up to 500 coins without requiring the assistance of an attendant. Today there are a variety of different types of slot machines, including video poker slot machines that are modernized forms of some of the more original gambling machines, are multi-line slots with more than just a single payline.

It is also common for modern day slot machines to be based on television shows and other themes, such as the Addams Family, or I Dream of Jeannie. Many new [tag-ice]slot machines[/tag-ice] have been released in recent years that allow for multi denomination playing, or tokenization which allows a single token to buy more than a single credit.

Technology Behind Slot Machines

Modern computer technology implemented in slot machines has given way to a variety of new slot machine concepts and growing innovation in slot machine capabilities. Modern [tag-dtec]slot machines[/tag-dtec] are completely computerized, so the odds are based on however they are programmed. The reels and the lever are only present for entertainment purposes, and the reel positions are chosen based on a RNG or Random Number Generator.

The RNG is constantly generating numbers randomly at a rate of hundreds or even thousands of numbers per second. The most recent random number is chosen as soon as the lever is pulled, and the result is determined accordingly. Some random number generators are actually PRNGs or Pseudorandom number generators, which means that their number sequence will eventually be repeated.