The machines paid out prizes of flavoured chewing gum, sidestepping the gambling regulations at the time, hence why slot machines are called fruit machines! This is where the cherry, watermelon, oranges and apple symbols come from. As part of the deal, the Mills Novelty Company agreed to replace some of the game’s symbols with pictures showing the fruit flavours of the chewing gum. They also negotiated a deal with a chewing gum company, the Bell Fruit Gum Company. In 1907 Fey decided to team up with another company, the Mills Novelty Company, and together they evolved new and improved versions of Fey’s machine. Due to the handle on the side of the machine and their habit of taking your money, Fey’s machines quickly earned the moniker ‘one-armed bandits’.

Fey’s machine was a huge success, and he was soon working extra hours to make enough machines to meet demand. Fey, a German immigrant to the US who had settled in San Francisco, realised that by replacing the poker cards with a simpler arrangement of symbols, and reducing the number of barrels from 5 to 3, the winning combinations could be made smaller, and automatic payout from the machine made possible.įey’s original machine used 5 symbols diamonds, spades, hearts, horseshoes and a liberty bell, a row of liberty bells giving the player the highest jackpot. It fell to a man called Charles Fey to come up with a solution to this problem. Prizes were usually a cigar or free drink.ĭue to the complexity of winning hand combinations in poker, making these ‘poker slot machines’ pay out a prize automatically was impossible with the technology available at the time. There was no automatic payout available but a winner would claim his or her prize from the barman.

The machines became very popular in the bars of New York at the time. The strength of the hand determined whether a prize was won. Players would put in a nickel, pull a lever and then they would be presented with a poker hand. These machines were based on the game of poker and consisted of 5 reels of cards. The first slot machines were developed by the Sitman & Pitt company of Brooklyn, New York in 1891.

Mills watermelon slot machine