The History of Slot Machines

Slot machines have come a long way. What started with a nickel, a lever and a handful of playing cards has grown into one of the most inventive corners of the gaming world, with hundreds of themes, mechanics and ways to play available at the tap of a screen.

If you've ever wondered about the history of slot machines - when they first appeared, how they evolved and what brought them online - this is the full story.

1891: Where the Slot Machine Story Begins

The history of slots starts in New York, in 1891, when a company called Sittman and Pitt built what is widely considered the first slot machine. Five drums, 50 playing cards and a nickel to play: it wasn't quite the game you'd recognise today, but the bones were there.

To spin the drums, players pulled a lever. Winning hands were based on poker, and any prize had to be claimed at the bar rather than from the machine itself, as there was no payout mechanism. Two cards, the 10 of Spades and the Jack of Hearts, had been quietly removed to boost the house edge.

A few years later, a mechanic named Charles Fey developed a simpler, more elegant version. He swapped the five drums for three reels and replaced the playing cards with symbols: spades, diamonds, hearts, horseshoes and a liberty bell. Line up three liberty bells and you'd hit the top prize, which is exactly why his machine became known as the Liberty Bell.

Fey kept refining his designs over the years, introducing symbols like cherries, melons and BARs. If those sound familiar, that's because they never really went away.

1964: Electricity Enters the Picture

Jump forward to 1964 and slot machines history takes a significant turn. Bally released the Money Honey, the first electromechanical slot machine.

It still had a lever at first, keeping things familiar for players, but that was gradually phased out in favour of buttons. More importantly, the Money Honey was the first machine built with a bottomless hopper, meaning it could pay out up to 500 coins automatically after a winning spin.

The 1970s and 1980s: Video Slots, the First Progressive Jackpots and More Innovations

12 years after Money Honey, slots took another leap. In 1976, a company called Fortune Coin produced the first video slot, built around a modified television screen and first installed in a Las Vegas hotel. Once it cleared the necessary regulatory approvals, the machine rolled out across Nevada and down the Strip.

The screen changed everything. Without the physical constraints of reels and drums, designers had a new canvas to work with.

The next major milestone in slot machines history came in 1986, when IGT introduced Megabucks, the first progressive jackpot slot. The concept was straightforward and immediately compelling: every spin that didn't trigger the jackpot added to it, letting the prize grow until someone hit it.

The very first Megabucks jackpot was claimed in 1987, worth $4,988,842.17. The progressive jackpot format has been a fixture of the industry ever since, and you'll find that same logic running through Jackpot King games today.

The 1990s: Second Screen Bonuses Arrive

The next chapter in the history of slot machines arguably belongs to WMS Industries, and a game called Reel 'Em In. Released in the 1990s, it introduced something that's now completely standard: the second-screen bonus round.

When a bonus was triggered, the base game stepped aside and a new screen took over, giving players a separate experience within the same game. It sounds simple now, but at the time it was a genuine shift in how slot games were designed and played.

By this point, slots were generating as much as 70% of casino floor revenue in some venues. The appetite for new mechanics was only growing.

Online Slots: A New Era Opens Up

The late 1990s brought slot machines history into entirely new territory: the internet. Online casinos launched with table games first - roulette and blackjack led the way - but slots followed, and the first online slot, Cash Splash, drew directly on the mechanics of its land-based predecessors.

What changed was the scale of what was now possible. Land-based machines were limited by physical space and engineering. Online slots had no such constraints, which meant designers could experiment with paylines, symbols, features and themes in ways that simply weren't feasible before. The library of available games began to grow quickly.

If you yourself are new to playing online, our guide on How to Play Slots Online is a good place to start. And if you want to try games before playing for real money, How to Play Slots for Free and How to Play Demo Slots are both worth a read.

Mobile Slots: Gaming on the Go

The first mobile slot

In 2005, slots made the jump to mobile. The first mobile slot game was Pub Fruity, a nod to the fruit machines familiar from pubs and arcades. It didn't pay out real money, as its rewards were kept within the game itself.

Two years later, the launch of the iPhone shifted things considerably. As smartphones became more capable and app stores opened up, mobile slots developed quickly into the real-money, fully featured games available today.

It's worth noting that playing on mobile is simply a different way to access the same games, not a replacement for responsible play. Tools like spend limits are just as accessible on mobile as anywhere else.

Megaways: Rewriting the Rules

The development of online slots to this point gave the game designers more opportunities to invent and innovate. Along came Megaways slots, first released in 2016 by Big Time Gaming (BTG).

The idea was to make the number of symbols appearing on each reel variable with every spin, which meant the number of ways to win shifted constantly too. Some Megaways games offer up to 117,649 ways to win on a single spin. That's a different kind of slot experience entirely.

The mechanic was licensed to other developers and quickly became one of the most widely adopted innovations in online slots history.

If you want to understand how Megaways and other mechanics actually work, our All the Types of Slot Machines Explained guide breaks it all down.

Slots Today: Features, Franchises and More Choice Than Ever

Modern online slots are a long way from five drums and a deck of cards. Free spins, re-spins, cascading reels, Cluster Pays and jackpots: the feature set available to game designers today is vast, and studios use it to build games with genuine depth and variety.

Franchise slots have also become a significant part of the landscape. Games like Rainbow Riches have expanded into full series, each title building on familiar themes while offering something new. At Virgin Games, we have more than a dozen Rainbow Riches slots, alongside hundreds of other titles across every style of play.

Curious about how it all fits together? Our Slot Game Strategy Guide looks at how to approach the games, and Why Do Gamers Love Playing Slots? explores what keeps players coming back to the reels.

Virgin Games and Slots: Our Story

Virgin Games launched in 2004, bringing the Virgin brand into online gaming with a clear aim: a casino site that put players first, with a strong games library, a straightforward experience and genuine customer care.

In 2013, Gamesys Group took over the operation of Virgin Games, expanding the slots offering significantly while keeping the personality of the brand intact. Gamesys itself became part of Bally's Corporation in 2021, making Virgin Games part of a wider international gaming business with decades of industry experience behind it.

Today, Virgin Games is operated in the UK by Gamesys Operations Limited, a part of Bally's Interactive, and is licensed and regulated by the UK Gambling Commission. That means every game on the site is tested for fairness, every player's data is protected and responsible gaming sits at the centre of how the site is run.

That last point matters to us. Our Game in Good Hands programme gives players a full set of tools to manage their play, including spend limits, session reminders and the option to take a break. Because a good experience isn't just about the games, it's about making sure playing stays enjoyable.

We now offer more than 900 slot games, including progressive jackpots, Megaways titles and classic slots, and we keep adding more. Not a bad distance to have travelled since 1891.

What Might Come Next for Online Slots

Predicting the future of any technology is a tricky business, but a few directions are already taking shape in the world of online slots.

Personalisation is one of the more interesting areas to watch. Platforms are beginning to use data more intelligently, not to change how games work or their outcomes (which are always governed by certified random number generators), but to improve how players discover games that suit their preferences. Think smarter recommendations, smoother navigation and interfaces that adapt to how you play.

Advances in mobile connectivity, including the continued rollout of 5G, are also expected to support richer, more responsive gaming experiences, particularly for live casino formats, though slots stand to benefit too.

There's also growing interest in how technology can support responsible gaming. AI-based tools are being developed to identify patterns that might indicate a player needs support, prompting a reminder, suggesting a spend limit or flagging when a cooling-off period might help. It's an area where the industry and regulators are increasingly aligned, and one we expect to develop further.

Beyond that? Immersive formats, new mechanics and the kind of innovation that's hard to predict, which, if the history of slot machines is anything to go by, is exactly how it should be.

So that’s how the humble slot machine became the game you know today. For a broader look at everything these games have to offer, our Ultimate Slots Guide is the place to go next.

Frequently Asked Questions

When were slot machines invented?

The first slot machine is widely credited to Sittman and Pitt, who built their five-drum card machine in New York in 1891.

Who invented the slot machine?

The first machine is attributed to Sittman and Pitt (1891), but Charles Fey is often cited as the inventor of the modern slot machine, having introduced reels, automatic payouts and iconic symbols like the liberty bell and the BAR.

What was the first online slot?

Cash Splash is widely recognised as the first online slot game, launched in the late 1990s and built on the mechanics of traditional land-based slots.

What was the first mobile slot?

Pub Fruity, released in 2005, is considered the first mobile slot. It didn't offer real-money payouts, though. That came later as smartphones became more capable and mobile gaming platforms developed.

Sign up at Virgin Games and be a part of the future of slots! We've got more than 900 to play, and plenty of chances to win big on progressive jackpot games.

Want to keep learning? Read more about online slot bonuses and how slots work, or head to the Virgin Games blog to browse through all of our latest articles.

All offers mentioned correct at the time of writing, but may be subject to change.