Video slots make online casinos possible. Here is some history behind them. We love telling this story because it’s mindblowing to see how far casino games have come. The first “real” reel machine was invented in California by an inventor, mechanic and tinkerer named Charles Fey. This happened in 1895, over 120 years ago! All the fruit symbols which are very well known in gambling today, came into play in 1907 – when Charles Fey couldn’t keep up with demand! Herbert Mills decided that a little competition never hurt anybody, and started making his own.
Believe it or not, the next big breakthroughs came in the 1960s. Before then, people were happy to gamble for small amounts of money on fruit machines that looked like small jukeboxes or oversized gumball dispensers. Today, there are people who are avid collectors of these venerable old casino games. You can still play them for real money – mostly quarters. No free spins here – sorry! But you may hit the ultra jackpot of somewhere around… 15$.
Moving on in slot history, Bally Manufacturing inched closer to the gambling machines we know and love today – they introduced the first electromechanical slot game and took out the one-armed-bandit lever. Of course, if you play games at a brick-and-mortar casino, pulling the lever is half the fun for some, so they kept this popular option open even in new games.
The first video slot didn’t come around until 1976, again, in California. California appears to be a huge gambling paradise on paper. This incredible design for new games got approved by the Nevada Gaming Commission and voila – the golden age of casino games came to be.
This set the stage for the major move of games to the online casino – in 1994 the first online video slots were introduced by the still successful Microgaming – and the rest is history. Today, online gambling is a multi-billion dollar industry across the world.
