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5 - History of Slot Machines - The 60's, 70's - The Electromechanical Era 
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In the 1960's Bally's Manufacturing, which had been in business since the 1930's concentrating on arcade machines and other coin-operated devises, began to successfully design and produce slot machines. Their machines were unique in that they utilized electro-mechanical circuitry to recognize a large number of pay-out possibilities. They also replaced the single-coin slicer of earlier machines with a hopper pay-out devise.
Bally's 1963 Money Honey machine possessed an ingenious hopper unit that was able to contain 2,500 dimes. Left-to-right and right-to-left pay-outs as well as five-line machines are credited to these innovations. Bally's accomplishments of the 1960' pushed them to the forefront of manufacturing throughout the next decade. Bally's controlled 90% of the slot machine market in Nevada during the 1970's, and also profited by sales abroad to countries that permitted gambling.
In 1967, a significant development in design came with the production of Bally' s famous "809," the first slot machine to give players an option to play more than one coin at a time while getting proportional winning pay-outs for the additional coins. The 809 allowed up to five coin play. Each additional coin deposited in the machine increased the pay-out amount.
Casinos that had originally scoffed at this new idea, soon saw it for what it was - a money maker that greatly increased a player's excitement and their bottom line.
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3 - History of Slot Machines - The Roarong 20's Rate It [ 0.00 / 0 Votes ]
By 1927, the Mills Novelty Company became one of the nation's largest factories, employing over 1,000 people. There are many reasons for Mill's rapid success. He not only boosted sales lowering prices, mail-order catalogues, and increased advertising, but also by making the games more aesthetically pleasing to the player. The Mills machines had a glass window in the front of the game so that the player could actually see the monetary award waiting to gush out to the lucky winner.
Players were also able to see three rows of symbols, which let the player see just how close he had actually come to winning. Within forty years, over a half million Mills slot machines had been sold.
The prosperity during the Roaring Twenties lead to the evolution of nickel machines into dime, quarter and half dollar machines. Because people were willing to play with larger denominations of money, manufacturers raced to produce and convert games that would accept larger sums.
Caille Brothers developed the Superior Jackpot Bell in 1928, while Fey invented the Silver Dollar, the fIrst Bell machine to allow players a chance to deposit a coin of that size.
The 1920's also marked the beginning of jackpot displays, allowing players to see large amounts of money waiting to be won. The coins were visible through one or two windows positioned in the front of the machine. Cast iron machines were converted to aluminum machines during this time as well.
By this point, within just thirty years of Fey's invention, over a million slot machines had been manufactured worldwide. Slot machines had started to become very serious business.
~ Bob Jennings
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