The Slot Machine

The Slot Machine

The most seductive and most devastating gambling apparatus is the slot, the one-armed bandit. Invented in 1895 by a San Francisco mechanic named Charles Fey, the original machine was called the "Liberty Bell" and was placed on bar counters across the city. If the right combinations came up, players were paid off in drinks.

No patent can be taken out on a gambling machine, Fey learned, so to protect his interests in this promising enterprise he gained control of all distribution rights. Soon business was booming. A number of models rapidly emerged from his shop, most of them now paying off in silver rather than alcohol. Soon every bar had its machine. To old-timers the names of these turn-of-the-century inventions are still familiar: On the Square, Royal Jumbo, Silver Cup, Ben Franklin, Little Monte Carlo, The Dewey, and dozens more.

For some years Fey enjoyed a monopoly of the market. The bubble burst when a shrewd Chicago businessman named Herbert Stephen Mills horned in on the action and began producing similar machines. Fey retired a rich man. Mills went on to become the largest manufacturer of slot machines in the world.

No other invention in history has ever made so much money for so small an investment as Fey's magic metal box. Not only did it grind the customer down with the inexorability that could only belong to a mathematically programmed instrument, but it did so by using the sucker's own muscle to turn the wheel. Here was the perfect study in perpetual motion: the customer paid for the right to provide the motive power for his own fleecing. No dealer, stickman, or shill was required. Before long the slot was a standard piece of equipment in every gambling house, and it soon became responsible for a sizable part of the house's net proceeds. In 1960, 40 million of the 200 million gambling dollars made in Nevada came from the slot business, making the bandit responsible for a fifth of all revenues. No wonder every club in Vegas today has its lineup of slot machines at the door, as does every Laundromat, beauty shop, and supermarket.

(Here, incidentally, a word to the wise: when in Nevada beware of slot machines outside the casino. The casino percentages are bad enough. Even the "loose" machines take 10 to 20 percent for the house. In the carwash and drug store, however, the slots sometimes are set to keep as much as 80 and 90 percent, true banditry. There are no regulations in Nevada as to how high earnings can be on these mechanical money-eaters, nor is there any way of determining what the odds and profit factors are by looking at them.)