Who has a long tongue 100 to 1. The longest tongue of animals. Pros and cons
The first slot machines were significantly different from today's slot machines. Only the idea of the game itself has remained unchanged - to win, the player needs to collect a winning combination of symbols. Simple rules The games and the exciting process itself have made slot machines one of the most popular entertainment in casinos.
Poker slot machines
The first gaming devices using coins were invented in 1880. These slot machines were based on card game poker, had five reels and fifty playing cards. The player put a coin into the machine, pulled the handle and watched the reels spin. The “payout” system was non-standard: in case of victory, the player approached the bartender and took a mug of beer or a cigar as a prize.
One-armed bandits
The next stage in the development of slot machines is one-armed bandits. These are the inventions of Charles Fey, the “father of slots.” History says that Fey invented the first slot machine in 1894. The second slot, invented in 1895, was called 4-11-44. These slot machines became known as “one-armed bandits” because of the lever used to spin the reels.
Liberty Bell
Already in 1898, Fey invented the first slot machine with automatic system payments - “Liberty Bell”. Landing three Liberty Bell symbols awarded the player a jackpot of 10 nickels. The novelty was so popular that even after slot machines were banned, Fey had many orders for their production.
Fruit machines
The next stage in the history of slots was the invention of “fruit” machines. The card symbols on the reels have been replaced with fruit designs: cherries, oranges, watermelons, apples and bar symbols. At first, payouts on such machines were chewing gum with fruity taste. This was done not only for fun, but also to avoid anti-gambling laws that were introduced in many states.
Electromechanical slots
The first electromechanical slot machine was invented in 1964 and was called Money Honey. Thanks to advanced electromechanical technology, the slot paid out winnings automatically and could accept up to 500 coins without technical support.
And in 1996, the first video slot appeared, which had a Reel"Em bonus game on the second screen.
History of modern slots
Today players have wide choice slot machines that they can play in both classic and online casinos. In vending machines there may be different quantities reels and paylines, bonuses and symbols. Most slots are themed, but some still use classic symbols. Among the slot machines, the most common are: classic 3-reel, 5-reel video slots, progressive, bonus, etc.
Online slots
The story dates back to 1994, when the state of Antigua and Barbuda signed the Caribbean Free Trade Agreement. This document allowed companies from all over the world to legally open online casinos. In 1995, the first online casino Gaming Club was opened.
To protect and support online players, the famous Kahnawake Gaming Commission (Canada) was founded in 1996. Many players preferred to play on the Internet, but in 1996 the United States passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which prohibited online gambling. However, according to statistics, now about 70% of the income of any online casino comes from slot machines.
There are an insane number of different slot machines these days, but they all have a common ancestor. They come from the first machine gun, which was invented in the early nineties of the 19th century by an immigrant from Bavaria whose name was Charles (according to other sources August) Fey. A mechanic and skilled fitter, Fey developed a design whose principles are still used today: a set of wheels with multiple various characters on them and payments that are made when certain combinations of symbols appear.
Charles Fay probably had no idea that the Liberty Bell slot machine, which he invented in 1895, would become so wildly popular decades later. Of course, since then the slot machine has undergone many changes and innovations, and one of the most notable and popular improvements to Fei's invention was the video slot.
The wheels on these early slot machines were decorated with the familiar suits of cards from a regular card deck: hearts, spades, diamonds, and crosses—along with a few other symbols, including horseshoes, stars, and bells. A big reward on the Fairy slot machines happened when three bells or other symbols fell out in a row. His invention was therefore also called the “Liberty Bell” or the “ringing machine.” This name stuck firmly, and subsequently they began to call everything that way.
Fairy slot machines soon spread throughout the country and were installed mainly in saloons and billiard rooms. In 1912, the state of Nevada legalized these machines as a form of vending machines, as long as they did not pay cash. This marked the beginning of a period in which slot machines paid out winnings in chewing gum and other merchandise. The icons on the reels represented various fruits that corresponded different types chewing gum, with some of these symbols still in use today, And in many places, slot machines are still sometimes called "fruit machines", and the three-cherry reward on many modern slot machines is a consequence of the original design.
The original of the first slot machine can still be seen in the Liberty Bell restaurant in Reno, Nevada, USA. Charles Fay's other achievements include the Draw Power, 3 Spinde and Klondike slot machines. In 1901, Charles Fey invented the poker machine. Also among his inventions is the separator that was used for the Liberty Bell. The hole in the middle allowed the control device to distinguish counterfeit coins and tokens from real ones. Fay was also the first to think of renting out his machines to drinking establishments on a 50/50 profit split basis.
The first slot machines accepted coins, but could not pay out winnings, so the owner himself gave them out. Already in 1888, serial production of slot machines with accumulative system Jackpot. The first Jackpot depended on the weight of the coins, that is, when there were a lot of them, the partition could not withstand the weight, and they all fell out of the storage tank. But this model did not become widespread, since the smartest ones immediately guessed that if you just hit the machine harder, the coins would fall out.
This was the golden age of the industry, and in America one could be sure that others would follow suit and develop more complex and new variations of the basic design. And indeed, competitors were not forced to wait - they quickly registered samples of slot machines of their own design. Even though they all used the same basic format, the wheels grew in size as... other characters were added and it became possible more payment options.
The desire to rip off gave birth to a new interesting character: a professional slot machine player. The first machines whose designs were based on classic projects Fairy and Mills were relatively simple mechanisms. Each wheel stopped at the symbol a few seconds after the lever was pulled.
This design made the game more or less random, but it also made it possible to accurately calculate how successful or unsuccessful the outcome was. If you played a slot machine with four wheels, each with 25 symbols and only one of them representing the jackpot, the odds of winning were (1/25) to the fourth power, or one in 390,625.
Players waited until the winnings grew to an amount of at least 390,625 coins. Then they came to the casino with friends and took with them more money, to play and occupied all the machines associated with this jackpot and played until one of them won.
It was a risky business because they had no guarantee of winning. The next big change in slot machine design—the computer chip—kept these guys out of business.
The possibility of a jackpot was easily calculated only on old machines. Knowing the number of symbols on each wheel and allowing each of them to appear equally, the calculation was simple. They waited until the jackpot grew to magic number, then they would hijack the slot machines and play—sleep be damned—until they won.
Modern slots are a completely different matter. Now they are controlled not by mechanical wheels spinning at random, but by computer chips that use so-called random number generators.
The machine you are in front of may have 25 symbols and spaces on each of the four wheels, but each symbol is not equally likely to appear. The jackpot symbol can be entered into the software with a probability of appearing at any frequency set by the manufacturer. Now the odds of hitting the jackpot may not be one in 390,625, but one in any number - and you won't know which number will come up until you press the button. In fact, the odds of hitting one of these huge jackpots are usually several million to one.
Modern slots no longer require 25 symbols on each wheel. Many of them only have 12 or so, and the newest slot machines don't even use wheels. Instead, video slot machines have a screen on which the computer places symbols. But the solution to modern slots is still the same: the secret is in the computer chip, which determines which symbol will appear on each wheel or stop in the payout window on the monitor.
In 1964, the Bally Manufacturing company produced the “Money Honey” machine, which has a whole series significant differences from their predecessors. Firstly, the insides of the machine were now stuffed not with springs, but with electronics, and secondly, there was sound design, lighting, the ability to place bets with various coins and a special coin storage for paying out prizes.
In 1975, Walt Fraley invents the video game Fortune Coin, which did not immediately become popular. The players reacted to new technology with great skepticism, trusting the real spinning reels of popular slots much more than the virtual reels of a new game.
Seeing the potential of video slots and understanding their advantages, International Game Technology (IGT) acquired the Fortune Coin game manufacturer in 1976 and used this technology to bring a whole line of new games to the market. This company is the second largest manufacturer of slot machines and specializes in video slots.
It was the invention of video poker in 1979 that caused the rise in popularity of video slots. Players quickly became accustomed to video poker machines, and manufacturers brought the first wave of video slots to the market.
Since the early eighties, slot machine manufacturers have continually added exciting innovations to their video slots: combining state and then national jackpots into a common progressive jackpot and bonus games. By connecting machines online, casinos are able to accumulate multi-million dollar jackpots that quickly increase in size and are played out frequently. Today it is very difficult to find a video slot without any bonus game.
Las Vegas (USA) and Melbourne (Australia) are considered the undisputed capitals of modern slot machines. In these gambling cities, players can choose between tens of thousands of options for a wide variety of slot machines.
Nowadays, many people play slots just for fun, for example, instead of watching TV after work. Many years have passed since the first slot machine appeared, but this industry continues to constantly develop and becomes more and more popular among players around the world.
Although, as the old law says: in the gaming business, reputation is, perhaps, much more valuable than in any other. However, neither professional ethics nor the improvement of slot machines will help people whose passion for gaming has developed into a serious illness - gaming addiction.
Any Russian television viewer has at least once seen the program “Own Game” on the NTV channel, in which erudite and very quick-thinking participants earn money by answering questions...
Slot machines (slot machines) have a rich and bright story. Their first models bore little resemblance to the machines that can currently be found in gambling establishments and casinos. However, the essence of the game remains the same - the player must collect a winning combination of several symbols, but everything depends solely on luck and luck.
The essence of the game with a traditional slot machine, which is also called the “one-armed bandit,” is to spin the reels or disks of the slot machine with a lever so that the symbols on these reels (discs) line up in a certain winning combination. If this happens, the slot machine gives the player a winning amount depending on the final combination of symbols on the reels.
The term "slot machine" was originally used to refer to both slot machines and vending machines. In English, Slot is a slot for accepting coins, and slot machines and vending machines had the same slots. But later the term “slot machine” was assigned only to slot machines.
It is believed that the first slot machines appeared in 1887 (according to other sources - in 1884), when an American auto mechanic of German origin, Charles August Fay (1862-1944), created the very first slot machine in his auto repair shop, which operated from five-cent coins and was called the “Bell.” Liberty" (Liberty Bell).
It was a three-disc slot machine. Each of the disks worked independently of the others and their rotation speed was different. Each reel featured symbols - Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, Horseshoe and Liberty Bell. Fi assembled his machines by hand and rented them out to local gaming and drinking establishments for half the profit from the machine.
The structure of the first Liberty Bell slot machine determined the appearance slot machines
Soon the slot machine received another name - “one-armed bandit”, since the player was very often left with nothing.
Meanwhile, in 1901, Faye designed and built a mechanical poker machine, the forerunner of modern electronic poker machines.
Fairy's three-reel Liberty Bell was such a huge success that it was copied by many slot machine manufacturers in the United States. In 1907, Chicago industrialist Herbert Stiefer Bell began producing machines very similar to Fye's Liberty Bell, which he called Operator Bell. And already in 1910, slot machines or bell machines could be seen in every town and village in the United States.
The spread of slot machines in Europe began after one of Fi's slot machines was stolen by Novelty.
Slot machines soon became illegal in California due to anti-gambling laws.
To get around the ban, slot machines were invented that gave out not money (coins), but chewing gum and candies as winnings. This is how the so-called fruit slot machines in which the card suit symbols on the reels were replaced with pictures of fruits: Orange, Watermelon, Cherry, Apple and BAR symbols.
Therefore, the fruits that we now see on the reels of slot machines are nothing more than a reminder of the difficult relationship between slot machines and the law. And in the UK, reel slot machines are still called fruit machines.
The period after World War I from 1919 to 1930 has gone down in slot machine history as the “Golden Era of Slot Machines.” At this time, slot machines were distributed in almost all regions of the United States, and also changed and developed, becoming even better.
In the late 40s, slot machines appeared at the Flamingo Hilton in Las Vegas.
And in 1964, the first electromechanical slot machine was designed and manufactured. They called him Money Honey. The electromechanics of the slot machine allowed winnings to be paid out automatically. These machines contained up to 500 coins. They marked the beginning of the era of electronic slot machines, in which the mechanical lever began to be used only as decoration.
In 1996, the American manufacturer WMS Industries Inc invented the first video slot with an additional bonus round, which was called Reel’Em.
Modern slot machines no longer have a reel or a lever. The slot machine has a computer chip built into it, the machine has a control panel and a display with images of rotating reels.
Modern slot machines have different numbers of reels and winning combinations, bonus symbols, etc. Many slot machines are themed games. At the same time, classic symbols still appear on the reels.
Currently popular the following types slot machines:
- 3-reel classic
- 5 reel video slots
- Progressive slots
- Big Berthas
- Bonus slots
- Video poker
- i-slots
With the advent and development of the Internet, online slot machines appeared.
The beginning of the era of online slot machines was marked by the adoption of the Free Trade and Transactions Act in 1994 by the authorities of Antigua and Barbuda. This legal document allowed companies from all over the world to legally open their casinos on the Internet.
The first company to start developing software for online casinos, there was Microgaming. The first online casino was launched in 1995, it was called Gaming Club, and the second - Inter Casino - in 1996.
