The History of Slot Evolution
Slot machines passed a long journey from Charles Fey's workshop on Market Street to glamorous palaces of modern casino houses. They have been redesigned for a host of times along the way. The driving power behind slots evolution, like in the case of the most casino games, was profit and greed.
The casinos having realized that slot machines are the most profitable game among gambling, started improving them to get even more advantage and attract more visitors. Let's see how slots evolution conformed to the demands of attractiveness and efficiency of slot games.
From the Place of Origin
The initial slots, invented by Charles Fey and manufactured by Herbert Mills, were like mechanical noddy for modern players. Pioneer machine was a primitive contraption with gears, wheels, shafts, bearings etc. inside them. The denomination was only one coin while 25 coins was a huge jackpot. On each reel there were from 10 to 20 symbols.
Electromechanical Era
Mobsters owning casino houses were unlike rocket scientists but calculated quickly that if a slot would accept more than one coins, the profit from each player could be double or even triple, making machines more beneficial and efficient. Technology gave birth to multi-liners, by-your-pay and multipliers machines in 1950. Due to electricity machines inside were supplied with coin meters, noisemakers, flashing lights etc. But the reels stayed still mechanical. Era of electromechanical slot machines ended in the end of 80's.
Electromechanical slots increased the amount of jackpot, the biggest bait for players, up to $300. Aiming to make jackpot even higher and more attractive for players, manufacturers introduced slots with 4 reels and 22 symbols on each reel. The jackpot was huge - $8000, but very poor odds. For this reason gamblers declared a boycott and demanded a traditional machine with 3 reels and 20 symbols.
Era of Computer Technologies
Casinos faced an urgent problem: how to propose a higher jackpot to clients keeping the previous format of 20 symbols and 3 reels? Computer technologies were the solution to the problem. Random Number Generator randomly selects 3 numbers from a huge variety of figures. Every number conforms to a specific symbol. In this way there appeared a host of possible symbol combinations. The odds were decided at the factory, where the slot machine was produced. So, today we can see this type of slot machines in any land-based and online casino. We call them video slots, as they have no more mechanical reels. What slots reel or video are better to play is on you.
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