Bright lights, colourful animations, awesome bonus features and big jackpot prizes – there’s lots to love about today’s online slot games. Millions of us now spin the reels of slots like Starburst, Cleopatra and Hotline on our smartphones. But how did slots come about? And were slots always as brilliant as the online slot games we play today?
The story of the slot begins way before the discovery of the internet. Back in 1895, an inventor named Charles Fey unveiled the Liberty Bell, the first ever slot machine. Granted, this machine was nothing like the online slots we now know and love – it weighed over 100 pounds and had just 3 reels, 5 symbols and a mechanical lever you had to physically pull to make the reels spin. But the Liberty Bell proved so popular with gamblers in the bars of Fey’s hometown of San Francisco, it wasn’t long before new slot machines started popping up across the world.
These new slots became more sophisticated as technology advanced. By the 1960s, we had an electromechanical slot machine (the Money Honey). By the 1970s, we had a video slot machine with a built-in TV display (the Fortune Coin). And finally, in the mid-1990s, we had the first online slot.
The online slot took gamblers by storm. It provided more reels, more paylines and more bonus features than early slot spinners could have ever imagined. Demand for online slots has continued to grow to this day, sparking the release of hundreds and hundreds of new titles for gamblers to play on their smartphones, tablets and PC at online casinos like Vegas Luck.
