The term slot machine (short for nickel-in-the-slot machine) was originally also used for automatic vending machines but in the 20th ๐ century came to refer almost exclusively to gambling devices. The first coin-operated gambling devices in the United States date to ๐ the 1880s, although they were actually mere noveltiesโsuch as two toy horses that would race after a coin was inserted ๐ in the machineโrather than direct gambling machines. Set on a bar in a saloon or similar establishment, such devices attracted ๐ wagering between patrons. With most machines, however, the proprietor paid off winning customers in drinks or cigars or sometimes in ๐ the form of trade checks (specially minted metal tokens) that could be exchanged for refreshments. By 1888 machines that paid ๐ off in coins were in existence. In the first ones, inserted coins fell onto an internal balance scale, where they ๐ might cause it to tip and spill other coins out; among later devices were ones with a circular display and ๐ a spinning indicator that came to rest on or pointed to a number, a colour, or a picture.
The first slot ๐ machines in the modern sense were invented by Bavarian-born American inventor Charles August Fey, at the time a mechanic in ๐ San Francisco, who built his first coin-operated gambling machine in 1894. The following year Fey built the 4-11-44 in his ๐ basement; it proved so successful at a local saloon that he soon quit his job and opened a factory to ๐ produce more units. In 1898 Fey built the Card Bell, the first three-reel slot machine with automatic cash payouts. The ๐ Card Bell had a handle that set the reels in motion when it was pushed down and playing card suitmarks ๐ that lined up to form poker hands. His next slot machine, the Liberty Bell, was built in 1899 and used ๐ horseshoes and bells as well as playing card suitmarks on the reels. Three bells lined up in a row meant ๐ the top payout. Chiefly because of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, only 4 of more than 100 Liberty Bell machines ๐ built by Fey survive. The Liberty Bell proved immensely popular among saloon patrons in San Francisco and was quickly copied ๐ by Feyโs competitors, such as the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago.
Forces of morality and the clergy, and then of law, ๐ frequently opposed the operation of slot machines. By the time San Francisco banned them in 1909, there were some 3,300 ๐ slot machines in the city. In order to circumvent the law, Fey and his competitors built machines with no coin ๐ slots in which purchase and payout (perhaps in drinks and cigars) occurred surreptitiously across a saloon counter. Soon most slot-machine ๐ factories relocated, especially to Chicago.
The ubiquitous reel symbols of various fruits were first used in 1909 by the Industry Novelty ๐ Company. In an effort to circumvent legal restrictions on slot machines, the company called its machines chewing gum dispensers, replaced ๐ suitmarks on the reels with fruit symbols that suggested various flavours of chewing gum, and built a few machines that ๐ really did dispense gum. The idea was copied in the following year by the Mills Novelty Company, which added on ๐ their reels a picture of a chewing gum pack (soon stylized as the well-known โbarโ symbol). The Mills Novelty Company ๐ also invented the โjackpotโ in 1916, whereby certain combinations of symbols on the reels regurgitated all the coins in the ๐ machine.
During the 1920s the machines were popular throughout much of the United States, especially in resort areas, and they continued ๐ to be popular into the Great Depression years of the โ30s. But knowledge that the distribution of slot machines was ๐ often controlled by organized crime led to increasing legislation restricting their sale and transportation as well as their use except ๐ in private social clubs. Prohibition outside Nevada, which had relegalized gambling in 1931, was virtually total by 1951, although illegal ๐ operation, especially in private clubs, was widely ignored.
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