Chip pulling the lever of a vintage Liberty Bell one-armed bandit beside a neon sign

The History of the Slot Machine: From Liberty Bell to Megaways

🕑 8 min read

Last updated: June 2026

Last verified 2 days ago (9 June 2026)

The slot machine is the king of the casino floor, earning more than every table game combined, and it started with a single clever contraption in 1895. From Charles Fey’s Liberty Bell and the clattering “one-armed bandit”, to the fruit symbols invented to dodge the law, to Money Honey and the electronic age, right up to today’s online Megaways, here is the full story of how a little three-reel machine grew into the most powerful money-maker gambling has ever known.

I’ve watched slot machines change more than any other thing on the casino floor, friend. When I started, they were heavy iron boxes you cranked by hand, and the floor rang with the sound of real coins hitting metal trays. Today they’re silent glass screens running on software. But the basic magic, that little flutter of hope as the reels spin, hasn’t changed a bit since 1895. Let me walk you through the whole journey.

The Liberty Bell, 1895

It all begins with a Bavarian-born mechanic in San Francisco named Charles Fey. Around 1895, he built the first true slot machine, the Liberty Bell. It had three spinning reels and five symbols, horseshoes, diamonds, spades, hearts, and a cracked Liberty Bell, and crucially, it could pay out winnings automatically. Line up three bells and the machine paid you ten nickels, no attendant needed.

That automatic payout was the breakthrough. Earlier gambling machines needed a bartender to hand over a drink or a cigar. Fey’s Liberty Bell paid you itself, which meant it could stand alone in a saloon and earn money all day. It was so popular, and so widely copied, that Fey couldn’t build them fast enough. Every slot machine on earth, from the Strip to your phone, is a descendant of that one clever box.

The one-armed bandit and the fruit machine

Those early machines earned their famous nickname, the one-armed bandit, from the long lever on the side you yanked to spin the reels, and from how reliably they robbed you blind. But here’s the charming part, the reason slots are covered in fruit. In the early 1900s, anti-gambling laws spread across America, so machine makers got crafty. They rebranded the payouts as chewing gum.

The reels were filled with fruit symbols, cherries, lemons, plums, and the machine “officially” paid out gum in those flavours rather than money. That’s why a winning line of cherries still means something to you today. And that little BAR symbol you see on classic slots? It started as the logo of the Bell-Fruit Gum Company. A whole visual language, born from a clever dodge around the law, that we still use on machines more than a century later.

Money Honey and the electric age

For decades, slots stayed purely mechanical, springs and gears and a hand crank. The next great leap came in 1963, when Bally released Money Honey, the first fully electromechanical slot machine. It still had the familiar lever, but underneath it was electric, and that changed everything.

Money Honey had a bottomless hopper and could pay out up to 500 coins automatically, far more than any mechanical machine could manage. Bigger automatic payouts meant bigger jackpots and far more excitement, and the slots began their march toward the center of the casino. The lever stuck around for show, players liked yanking it, but the muscle had quietly gone electric. This was the moment slots started becoming serious money.

🎲 Chip’s Vegas

The old slot floor was a different world for the senses, friend. Real coins, by the bucketful. You’d get a paper cup full of nickels from the cage and feed them in by hand, and a win meant a glorious clatter of metal pouring into the tray, loud enough to turn heads three rows over. We had “change girls” walking the aisles with rolls of coins on their belts. Your hands turned black from handling the money all night. When the ticket printers and the silent screens came in around the turn of the century, the floor got cleaner and quieter and, I’ll be honest, a little sadder. Something was lost when that sound went away. The machines pay the same edge they always did, mind. They just don’t sing about it the way they used to.

The video slot and the RNG revolution

In 1976, a company in Las Vegas put the first video slot on a casino floor, replacing the physical reels with a screen. Players were suspicious at first, sure the thing must be rigged without real reels to watch, but video won out, because a screen can do anything, bonus rounds, animations, multiple paylines, themes from movies and music.

The deeper revolution, though, was invisible: the random number generator, and a clever bit of maths called the virtual reel. A 1980s innovation let machines map a few physical reel positions onto a much larger set of virtual ones, so the odds could be weighted. This is how a modern slot can offer a life-changing jackpot while still keeping its house edge, the losing combinations are simply made far more likely than they appear. Understanding that maths is the whole game, and our RTP explained guide breaks it down.

Online slots and the modern era

The 1990s brought the internet, and the slot machine made the jump to the screen in your home. Early online casinos offered simple digital versions of the classics, but the form exploded from there. Today’s online slots are dazzling, with cinematic themes, elaborate bonus features, and engines like Megaways that offer hundreds of thousands of ways to win on a single spin.

Then came the phone, and the most powerful slot machine ever made went into everybody’s pocket, playable anywhere, anytime. The technology raced ahead, but the heart of it is still Charles Fey’s idea: spinning symbols, an automatic payout, and that flutter of hope. For the best of the modern crop, see our best online slots guide.

Why slots took over the floor

Here’s the part that surprises people. The slot machine, not blackjack, not poker, not roulette, is by far the biggest earner in the modern casino, often bringing in well over half, sometimes seventy percent or more, of a casino’s gambling revenue. The flashy table games get the movies and the glamour, but the quiet rows of slots pay the bills.

Why? Because slots are perfect machines for the house. They need no dealer, run thousands of fast rounds an hour, accept any size of bet, and carry a house edge usually far steeper than the good table games, frequently 5% to 10% or more. Add the hypnotic lights and sounds we cover in our how casinos trick you piece, and you have the most efficient money-maker in gambling history. A wonderful bit of entertainment, born in a San Francisco workshop in 1895, and engineered ever since to keep you spinning.

Frequently asked questions

Who invented the slot machine?

Charles Fey, a mechanic in San Francisco, invented the first true slot machine, the Liberty Bell, around 1895. Its three reels and automatic payout made it the blueprint for every slot since. Earlier machines existed, but Fey’s was the first that could pay out winnings by itself, which is what made it a runaway success.

Why do slot machines have fruit symbols?

In the early 1900s, anti-gambling laws led makers to disguise slots as gum dispensers. The fruit symbols, cherries, lemons, plums, represented the gum flavours the machine “officially” paid out instead of cash. The BAR symbol came from the Bell-Fruit Gum Company logo. The imagery stuck, and we still use it today.

Why are slot machines called one-armed bandits?

The nickname comes from the large lever, the “arm”, on the side of early machines that players pulled to spin the reels, combined with how efficiently the machines took players’ money, like a bandit. Even though modern slots use buttons, the colourful old name has stuck around for over a century.

Do slot machines make the most money for casinos?

Yes, by a wide margin. Slots typically generate well over half, and often around 70%, of a casino’s gambling revenue, more than all the table games combined. They need no dealer, run fast, accept any bet size, and usually carry a higher house edge than games like blackjack, making them the casino’s most efficient earner.

Related ChipReign pages

Best online slots: the modern descendants of the Liberty Bell
RTP explained: the maths inside every slot
How casinos trick you: the lights and sounds, decoded
Casino games by house edge: where slots really rank
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