The original slot machine was designed and created in 1891. This was rather small counter top machine that was activated by throwing a coin into it. It had a lever that was designed as a skeuomorphic trigger to starts the game. Once the lever got pulled forward, the five wheels would spin. Each wheel had images of a deck of cards on them.
Once the wheels stopped, you could win a prize if you if your lined up cards represented a poker hand that was kings or better. Unlike modern slot machines, you also only had the one line on which you could play. The early slot machine did not pay out in cash. You declared your win to the barkeep and he would give you a prize, generally a free drink. But getting prizes was too easy. You can after all only fir so many images on a wheel and not the entire 52 cards in a deck
The New Shapes?
In the original machine each of the five wheels had 10 images on it. They redesigned the machine to make winner a little more difficult. The 5 wheels were replaced with 3 wheels and each wheel now only had 5 images on it. These images where a horseshoe, diamonds, spades, hearts and the liberty bell. The last image gave birth to the machines name – The Liberty Bell Slot Machine.
With the previous poker-based machine it was too easy to win because of the almost infinite that poker hands that a 10 image, 5 wheels machine can give you. In this new version of the game there was only 1 way to win. You had to line up three identical images. A win was therefore, for example the lining up of three horseshoes. This made the game considerably more difficult to win at.
Banning The Game
By the mid 1900’s gambling became an issue all over the world and most games of chance were outlawed. But the industry got clever and found a loophole in the law. You were allowed to play games of chance if you could win food from it. Changes began almost immediately, and slot machines were adapted to have food imagery on it.
The law did not say that you are not allowed to get money with your food. Games featuring food items, everything from gum to fruit started to make its way onto the floors of pubs everywhere. Now you could win 50 dollars and a bag of apples. Of course, there had been transformations up until that point this is more or less the rise of the fruit imagery-based slot machines. How about them apples.
UK Pub Life
Even today and even through all of the incarnations of the standard https://casinositescanada.net/slots/, the fruit based one has survived and has become an integral part of the pub life. It is here that the it got the name of the ‘Fruit Machine’. Many older people claim that the fruit their parents and grandparents won at from these machines, got them through the Great Depression.