A German immigrant Charles Fey created and developed the first slot machine in the late 1800s in San Francisco. A metal box, which he called The Liberty Bell, had a window with three metal reels and stood on cast-iron feet.

These machines needed a nickel to play and had ten different symbols, visit this link creating a thousand possible combinations. A player won a whopping jackpot of 10 nickels if he lined up three Liberty Bells (compelling a number of winners to happily sing America, the Beautiful).

Within the 1940s, back when Bugsy Siegel laid the groundwork for Las Vegas gambling, slot machines were just an afterthought, a small distraction to keep most wives occupied while the husbands played blackjack or craps. Slots were described as one-armed bandits because of their poor odds.