Gambling in American History

Bally’s was the worldwide innovator. It moved machines from being mere mechanical devices activated by pulling a handle to being electromechanical devices. The handle pull was now just an alternative way to push a button to make the machine run. Bally’s first machine was the Money Honey, which contained a much larger capacity to store coins, making bigger payoffs more possible. In 1964, Bally’s developed a progressive machine, which permitted a jackpot amount to grow each time the player made a losing play. The possibility of winning thousands of dollars on machine play was opened up. Also, the machines could accumulate jackpots large enough that the expected payoff return for a player could become positive (over 100 percent). Soon the company made multipliers, that is, machines that accepted up to five coins; with each additional coin put in, the prizes would multiply. Bally’s added reels to some models. In 1968 it marketed a machine that had three play lines on it. In the late 1970s it developed low-boy machines that had flat horizontal playing surfaces, over which the player could lean. Eventually, this style of machine was adjusted to be operational on a bar surface. Bally’s also developed the popular Big Bertha, an extremely large machine (six to eight feet across) that would dominate a casino floor, drawing attention to slot machine play. In 1980 Bally’s engineered another breakthrough. It linked machines together so that several could offer one very big progressive jackpot.  The Hilton casinos of Las Vegas used these networks of machines to offer million-dollar guaranteed Pot of Gold jackpots.
The 1980s were not kind to Bally’s. It entered the casino business as an owner of an Atlantic City casino and then several casinos in Nevada. Other casinos became somewhat reluctant to buy Bally’s products and thereby display the name of a competitor of their gambling floors. But more importantly, the computer age had descended, and Bally’s was hesitant to make the leap. One of Bally’s sales executives, Si Redd, worked on the development of a video gambling device with a cathode-ray tube. Poker could be played on his device. He wanted Bally’s to market the machine and give him the appropriate credit. Bally’s higher executives, however, did not want to stray from their “winning formula” of the 1960s and 1970s. They struck a deal: Si Redd would leave the company and promise not to make any machines that would compete with the Bally’s models nor to use knowledge he had gained at Bally’s. In turn, Redd would be given a five-year exclusive right to develop his poker machine. Redd became instrumental in starting International Gaming Technologies (IGT), which manufactured and sold video poker machines. Five years was all he needed. By the mid-1980s, IGT surpassed Bally’s in machine sales, and after IGT won the right to make reel machines as well, it thoroughly dominated the market, with over 75% of the sales of machines in the United States and Canada. IGT now stands as perhaps the largest slot machine company in the world, sharing that world market stage with Aristocrat and Sigma.
The computer technologies and cathode-ray tube video screens have changed the look and operations of machines in many ways. When California authorized a state lottery in 1984, Nevada casinos worried. They could not compete with a multi-million-dollar jackpot; IGT came to the rescue. The company developed Mega-Bucks, a statewide network of machines offering one progressive jackpot. Although the jackpot has never risen to the levels of some lottery jackpots, it has gone over $10 million several times, and it keeps many Nevada regulars from running to the state line to buy California tickets – at least until the California jackpots get really high. The Mega-Bucks network includes upward of 1,000 machines. Within casinos there are many other linked networks of machines.
Modern machines developed by IGT, Sigma, Bally’s, Anchor, Mikohn, and other companies have also incorporated other features. One machine has holograms in its displays. One blackjack machine features a three-dimensional dealer who appears to actually deal out cards as he talks to the players, wishing them good luck, congratulating them on wins, consoling them on losses, and urging them to try again. Sigma has simulated a racetrack and horse races. The games have also taken on names of popular nongambling games. Mikohn has a Yatzee machine. Anchor developed a Wheel of Fortune game involving reel play; when a certain winning combination appears, a wheel above the machine spins for the superjackpot as noises from the television Wheel of Fortune game are heard. There is also a monopoly game. Several casinos have banks of Elvis machines. Although all the machines offer gambling games, with their variety has come a variety of rules, making the machines much more sophisticated than the ones that just asked the player to pull a handle – or decide how many coins to play and then pull a handle.