From the Liberty Bell to Megaways: A Short History of Slots
Three reels and a bell in 1890s San Francisco, a coin hopper in the 1960s, a TV screen in the 70s — how the slot machine became the world's most played casino game.
The 1890s: the Liberty Bell
The slot machine as we know it is usually credited to Charles Fey, a mechanic in San Francisco. In the 1890s he built the Liberty Bell: three spinning reels with horseshoes, diamonds, spades, hearts and a cracked Liberty Bell. Three bells paid the top prize. Its simple layout — three reels, a lever and an automatic payout — set the template for decades.
Fruit symbols and the "one-armed bandit"
When gambling laws tightened in the early 20th century, some machines paid out in chewing gum and sweets. Fruit flavours became cherries, lemons and plums on the reels — symbols that still define "classic" slots today. The lever on the side earned the machines their nickname: the one-armed bandit.
1963: electricity arrives
Bally's Money Honey (1963) was the first fully electromechanical slot. Its bottomless hopper could pay out hundreds of coins automatically, which made bigger prizes possible and pushed slots from the side of the casino floor to the centre.
1976: the first video slot
In Las Vegas, the Fortune Coin company replaced the physical reels with a television screen. Early players were suspicious of reels they could not touch, but video quickly won — it allowed more symbols, more lines and bonus games.
The 1990s: online
The first online casinos appeared in the mid-1990s. Slots moved to home computers and, later, to phones — where most are played today.
The 2010s: Megaways and beyond
In the mid-2010s, Big Time Gaming introduced Megaways, a mechanic where the number of symbols on each reel changes every spin, creating up to hundreds of thousands of ways to win. Tumbling reels, cluster pays and pay-anywhere grids followed — but the idea is still Fey's: line up the right symbols.
