In the late 1800s online gambling took place in saloons in American. They had a slot game device that was like a primitive slot machine that didn’t pay cash. The bettors would receive their winnings as cigars or drinks or the like.  People were fascinated by these machines.  A German immigrant was so fascinated by these machines that he began to tinker with them and figured out a way to have them deliver cash payments. The German’s name was Charles Fey and he built a machine called the Liberty Bell in the late 1890s. His early slot machine had three spinning reels with ten symbols on each reel. The reels had the stars, bells and horseshoes on them. A metal box held the reels.  This early slot machine made cash payments where certain combinations of symbols came up. The three bells represented the jackpot. This is why the machine became know as the Liberty Bell machine. The slot machines were very popular with the players.  Fey only made a few and didn’t mass produce them.

The machines were so popular that a Chicagoan name Herbert Mills saw a future in them. Mills copied and modified Fey’s Liberty Bell design.  He doubled the number of symbols on each reel to twenty and widened the window on the payout line. This meant that the UK casino players could see the symbols that they missed, which kept them playing longer trying to hit the big pots. Mills was the found of Mills slot machines. These machines are now antiques.