First Video Slot Machine
- When Was The First Video Slot Machine Created
- First Video Slot Machine
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- Spinning-reel slots in particular are profit juggernauts for most casinos, outperforming table games like blackjack, video poker machines and other forms of gambling. What about slot machines.
- The first true electronic slot (video slot) was developed in 1976 by N. Black in the company Fortune Coin Co., Las Vegas, NV. This slot machine used a modified 19-inch color screen of the Sony boards and software for all machine functions. The original machine was incorporated in a cabin - slot.
Over 100 years has passed since the first ever slot machine, the 'Liberty Bell' was launched. The biggest developments have occurred between the late 1970's and today mainly due to the advances we have seen in computer technology.
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We are sure to see even bigger and greater changes in the years to come as the game maker push the limits of what's possible in terms of jackpots, features and game design. One thing is for sure - the age of the video slot is only getting better.
Time Line
Below you will find a time line of the changes and developments that have occurred in the world of slot machines
1897 : The Invention
Charles August Fey, a car mechanic from San Francisco invents the 'Liberty Bell' mechanical slot machine. It had four symbols on the three reels and was somewhat easy to cheat as the handle controlled the reels. For this reason the top jackpot was a rather small fifty cents.
1898 to 1909 : Popularity Grows
While there were no major changes to how slots worked several new companies began making games with specifications the same as the Liberty Bell but with different appearances. It was a fast growing industry as the demand for new games was high.
1909 : Prohibition
The early years of the 1900's brought a setback to the slot manufacturers. The anti gambling campaigners managed to get the games banned, first in San Francisco, then Nevada and finally the whole of California. Of course as we know now this was just a temporary setback.
1964 : Electro-mechanical Slot Machines
Bally Manufacturing releases 'Money Honey' with some major differences between it and it's predecessors. Firstly the inside working were now electronic parts rather than springs. Secondly they added sounds, lights, the option to bet multiple coins and a hopper for coins.
1975 : First Video Slot Machine Hits Casino Floors
Walt Fraley invents the 'Fortune Coin' video screen game. At the time it was not popular as players where skeptical about the technology and did not trust the virtual reels over the wide spread spinning reel slots.
1976 : International Game Technology
Seeing the potential of the video slot and the advantages, IGT purchases the Fortune Coin manufacturer and uses their technology to bring out a host of new games. They grow to be the second largest slot manufacturer and focus on video reel slots.
1979 : Video Poker Becomes Popular
It was the invention of video poker that really caused the video slot popularity to grow. Players quickly took to video poker machines and the manufacturers started to introduce the first wave of video slot machines.
1980 to Today : Innovations, Linked Progressives and Bonus Games
Since the early eight slot machine makers have continually added new and exciting features to video slots. These have included the linking of jackpots in state and country wide progressives and the addition of the bonus game. By linking the jackpots casinos have the ability to have multi-million dollar jackpots that grow fast and hit frequently.
Today you will be hard pressed to find a video slot that does not have some sort of bonus. From free games to pick a box and to game show themes video slots have come a long way compared to Charles Fey's first invention - the Liberty Bell.
The gaming industry is big business in the U.S., contributing an estimated US$240 billion to the economy each year, while generating $38 billion in tax revenues and supporting 17 million jobs.
What people may not realize is that slot machines, video poker machines and other electronic gaming devices make up the bulk of all that economic activity. At casinos in Iowa and South Dakota, for example, such devices have contributed up to 89 percent of annual gaming revenue.
Spinning-reel slots in particular are profit juggernauts for most casinos, outperforming table games like blackjack, video poker machines and other forms of gambling.
What about slot machines makes them such reliable money makers? In part, it has something to do with casinos’ ability to hide their true price from even the savviest of gamblers.
The price of a slot
An important economic theory holds that when the price of something goes up, demand for it tends to fall.
But that depends on price transparency, which exists for most of the day-to-day purchases we make. That is, other than visits to the doctor’s office and possibly the auto mechanic, we know the price of most products and services before we decide to pay for them.
Slots may be even worse than the doctor’s office, in that most of us will never know the true price of our wagers. Which means the law of supply and demand breaks down.
Casino operators usually think of price in terms of what is known as the average or expected house advantage on each bet placed by players. Basically, it’s the long-term edge that is built into the game. For an individual player, his or her limited interaction with the game will result in a “price” that looks a lot different.
For example, consider a game with a 10 percent house advantage – which is fairly typical. This means that over the long run, the game will return 10 percent of all wagers it accepts to the casino that owns it. So if it accepts $1 million in wagers over 2 million spins, it would be expected to pay out $900,000, resulting in a casino gain of $100,000. Thus from the management’s perspective, the “price” it charges is the 10 percent it expects to collect from gamblers over time.
Individual players, however, will likely define price as the cost of the spin. For example, if a player bets $1, spins the reels and receives no payout, that’ll be the price – not 10 cents.
So who is correct? Both, in a way. While the game has certainly collected $1 from the player, management knows that eventually 90 cents of that will be dispensed to other players.
A player could never know this, however, given he will only be playing for an hour or two, during which he may hope a large payout will make up for his many losses and then some. And at this rate of play it could take years of playing a single slot machine for the casino’s long-term advantage to become evident.
Short-term vs. long-term
This difference in price perspective is rooted in the gap between the short-term view of the players and the long-term view of management. This is one of the lessons I’ve learned in my more than three decades in the gambling industry analyzing the performance of casino games and as a researcher studying them.
Let’s consider George, who just got his paycheck and heads to the casino with $80 to spend over an hour on a Tuesday night. There are basically three outcomes: He loses everything, hits a considerable jackpot and wins big, or makes or loses a little but manages to walk away before the odds turn decidedly against him.
Of course, the first outcome is far more common than the other two – it has to be for the casino to maintain its house advantage. The funds to pay big jackpots come from frequent losers (who get wiped out). Without all these losers, there can be no big winners – which is why so many people play in the first place.
When Was The First Video Slot Machine Created
Specifically, the sum of all the individual losses is used to fund the big jackpots. Therefore, to provide enticing jackpots, many players must lose all of their Tuesday night bankroll.
What is less obvious to many is that the long-term experience rarely occurs at the player level. That is, players rarely lose their $80 in a uniform manner (that is, a rate of 10 percent per spin). If this were the typical slot experience, it would be predictably disappointing. But it would make it very easy for a player to identify the price he’s paying.
Raising the price
Ultimately, the casino is selling excitement, which is comprised of hope and variance. Even though a slot may have a modest house advantage from management’s perspective, such as 4 percent, it can and often does win all of George’s Tuesday night bankroll in short order.
This is primarily due to the variance in the slot machine’s pay table – which lists all the winning symbol combinations and the number of credits awarded for each one. While the pay table is visible to the player, the probability of producing each winning symbol combination remains hidden. Of course, these probabilities are a critical determinant of the house advantage – that is, the long-term price of the wager.
This rare ability to hide the price of a good or service offers an opportunity for casino management to raise the price without notifying the players – if they can get away with it.
Casino managers are under tremendous pressure to maximize their all-important slot revenue, but they do not want to kill the golden goose by raising the “price” too much. If players are able to detect these concealed price increases simply by playing the games, then they may choose to play at another casino.
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This terrifies casino operators, as it is difficult and expensive to recover from perceptions of a high-priced slot product.
Getting away with it
Consequently, many operators resist increasing the house advantages of their slot machines, believing that players can detect these price shocks.
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Our new research, however, has found that increases in the casino advantage have produced significant gains in revenue with no signs of detection even by savvy players. In multiple comparisons of two otherwise identical reel games, the high-priced games produced significantly greater revenue for the casino. These findings were confirmed in a second study.
Further analysis revealed no evidence of play migration from the high-priced games, despite the fact their low-priced counterparts were located a mere 3 feet away.
Importantly, these results occurred in spite of the egregious economic disincentive to play the high-priced games. That is, the visible pay tables were identical on both the high- and low-priced games, within each of the two-game pairings. The only difference was the concealed probabilities of each payout.
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Armed with this knowledge, management may be more willing to increase prices. And for price-sensitive gamblers, reel slot machines may become something to avoid.