10 Fun Facts About Slot Machines
A BAR symbol has a surprisingly chewy backstory. Las Vegas puts slots among its airport amenities.
And one of the machines that helped establish the familiar 3-reel format is now a museum rarity.
These 10 slot machine facts bring together unusual settings, memorable inventions and a jackpot of almost $40 million.
There’s a little history behind the symbols you recognize, plus a few modern features worth a closer look.
1. A Slot Jackpot Reached Almost $40 Million
A 25-year-old software engineer from Los Angeles went to Las Vegas to visit family and watch college basketball.
On March 21, 2003, he won $39,713,982.25 on Megabucks at the Excalibur Hotel-Casino. Guinness World Records documents the historic prize and says he had put about $100 into the machine when the winning symbols lined up.
2. Early Machines Used Poker Cards
Picture a poker hand displayed inside a cabinet. Sittman & Pitt’s 1891 poker-machine precursor used 5 drums showing playing cards. A pull produced a hand.
Winning hands earned rewards such as drinks or cigars, supplied by the place hosting the game. The machine itself had no automatic cash-payout mechanism.
3. You Can Find Slots at Las Vegas Airport
Most airports offer somewhere to buy a coffee or a neck pillow. Las Vegas adds spinning reels.
Harry Reid International Airport lists slots among its terminal amenities, putting them in the same setting as carry-on bags and gate announcements. I
t’s a very Vegas welcome.
4. The BAR Symbol Has a Chewing-Gum Backstory
That familiar BAR has a connection to a gum label. In his account of slot-symbol history, Marshall Fey, Charles Fey’s grandson, links BAR to gum-wrapper branding and describes machines that offered gum as prizes.
His account also connects fruit symbols with gum flavors.
The Bell-Fruit gum association gives those cherries and other fruit a more literal backstory than you might expect from today’s reels.
5. Some Slots Have 4,096 Ways to Win
Golden Buffalo Hot Drop Jackpots has 4,096 ways. In this format, matching symbols can connect across adjacent reels in several positions, following the paytable’s rules.
The number counts possible matching paths across the reels. These ways to win describe the game’s layout; the total alone doesn’t tell you whether a slot has better odds.
6. Only 7 Liberty Bell Machines Were Known to Survive
For its 2016–17 exhibition, SFO Museum reported only 7 known surviving Liberty Bell machines from nearly 100 produced.
Charles Fey’s design helped establish the 3-reel format with automatic payouts, bringing the spinning symbols and the mechanism for paying a prize together in one cabinet.
7. Jurassic Park and the NFL Have Official Slots
Dinosaurs and football teams have both made the move into officially licensed slot games.
Universal announced Jurassic Park: Gold as an online slot, while Aristocrat Gaming brought NFL-themed machines to physical casino floors.
These examples from the wider industry bring recognizable movie worlds and major sports teams into the space once occupied by fruit and bells.
8. Early Video Slots Used a Television Screen
Fortune Coin’s 1976 video slot used an adapted TV screen to display simulated reels inside a casino cabinet.
The spinning symbols now appeared electronically.
It was an early move toward the screen-based games players recognize today, using a display already familiar from living rooms.
9. Australian Players Call Slots “Pokies”
In Australia, slots are commonly called “pokies,” a name derived from poker machines.
The term is used for reel-based games, too, so hearing it doesn’t mean someone is talking about playing a hand of poker.
British players have another familiar name: “fruit machines.” Those cherries and lemons have left their mark on the vocabulary as well as the reels.
10. Some Jackpots Have a Deadline
Some jackpot displays come with a clock. With Hot Drop Jackpots, the Hourly and Daily prizes must be awarded within their advertised windows across the eligible network. The Epic tier is an untimed progressive that grows until won.
The deadline applies to awarding a prize within the network. It doesn’t guarantee any individual player a win.
Slots have picked up a little of everything along the way, including poker, chewing gum, television and movie franchises.
The next time a familiar symbol lands on the reels, you might recognize a small piece of that history.