The first pokie machine was invented all the way back in 1887 by a gentleman by the name of Charles Fey of San Francisco USA. Charles simplified the process of making an automatic payout machine and came up with a three spinning reels containing five symbols of which we are still familiar with today. The five symbols were horseshoes, diamonds, spades, hearts and a liberty bell. To win the biggest prize, you had to get three liberty bells in a row and you received a grand total of ten nickels. This poker machine proved to be such a great success that Charles couldn’t keep up with the demand. The public were enthralled with their new mechanical gaming device also affectionately known as the “one-armed bandit”.
A few years later, in 1891, Sittman and Pitt from New York invented a gambling machine which became the ancestor to the modern day pokie machine. It had five drums holding a total of 50 card faces and was based poker. This machine was so popular that most of the bars in the city had at least one or two of these machines. The game was simple, all you had to do was to insert a nickel and pull the lever, this would spin the drum. The rules of winning were based on a poker hand and the better you hand was the more you win.
One downside to this machine was the fact that there was no direct payout system and so prizes was predetermined by the establishment the poker machine was held in. For example, if you had a pair of Kings as your hand, you may have won a free beer whereas if you had a royal flush, the bar could give you cigars or drinks. The bar made the odds better for them by removing a couple of cards in the machine or rearranging the order of the drums. This ensured that they made more money than giving out in prizes.
Quite a few decades later, in 1963, a gentleman by the name of Bally developed the first fully hybrid of electric and mechanical pokie machine called Money Honey. This machine was revolutionary in the fact that it offered bottomless hopper and automatic payout of up to 500 coins without the need to call an attendant. From then on the modern day pokie machine was born.
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