Charles Fey

The man who invented the slot machine.

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Charles Fey was a German immigrant who settled in San Francisco, where he worked as a machinist. After twelve years in the San Francisco area, Fey built the Liberty Bell slot machine, with the help of Theodore Holtz. The first Liberty Bell machine went into a saloon in 1897.

In American saloons of the 1890's, there were gambling machines. These were called coin machines. Instead of slots games, though, the coin machines tried to simulate card games and were sometimes known as poker machines. Charles Fey's first slot machines were quite similar to the poker machines of the time.

Striking off on his own in 1898, Charles Fey built his first 3-reel slot machine. The 3-reel slot would be the prototype for decades of slot machines. Early on, Charles Fey's slots were popular, and the novelty of the reel symbols drew customers to the machines. There were five reel symbols on the new three-reel slot machine: diamonds, hearts, spades, horseshoes and liberty bell symbols.

Because Charles Fey made the liberty bell symbol the prize symbol, this new slot machine became known as the Liberty Bell slot machine. The slot machines would prove popular in the San Francisco Bay area, particularly because they offered cash rewards instead of the cigars that most poker machines offered for wins. A win on the Liberty Bell payed off at a maximum of $5, which was a large sum at the time.

The coin payoffs created a legal controversy in San Francisco, though, because the reformers of the Bay Area wanted to outlaw all gambling. Despite the controversies, Charles Fey's slot machine workshop produced many new machines from 1898 until 1906. This production came to an end in 1906, when the San Francisco Earthquake destroyed Fey's workshop.

Charles Fey did not let this stop him, though. In 1907, Fey formed a partnership with the novelty item producer, Herbert Mills Manufacturing. The partnership would produce 30,000 slot machines in the next few years.

Charles Fey's business was dealt a crippling blow in 1909, when the San Francisco authorities passed anti-gambling laws which specifically targeted the slot machine. A statewide ban of slot machines was passed in California in 1911, while Nevada passed a slot machine ban in 1910.

To circumvent the new laws, slot machines supposedly offered prizes such as gum, mints and drinks. In actuality, slot machines payed coins with a 75% payback. This would skirt the local laws for many years to come, and Charles Fey continued to manufacture slot machines for decades more. Along the way, Charles Fey and Herbert Mills Manufacturing invented fruit machines (slot machines with fruit symbols) in 1910 and silver dollar 3-reel slots in 1929.

Despite their inventiveness, slot machines remained a niche until the 1930's, until Nevada legalized gambling. When casinos began to pop up on the Las Vegas Strip, they began to display slot machines on their casino floors. By the time Charles Fey died in 1944, the slot machine was a major part of the American casino establishment. Today, Charles Fey's inventions account for around 75% of all profits for casinos worldwide.

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