Slot Machine Cherries No Background
Have you ever played a slot machine and wondered how they came up with the symbols they use? And why cherries in particular? Well, pull up a chair because you’re going to hear about the history of anti-gambling laws – and chewing gum.
Lucky Charms
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The earliest slot machines officially on record date back to 1891 in Brooklyn, where a poker-based machine with five drums and 10 cards per drum became popular at the local drinking holes. But the traditional slot machine as we know it today was invented in 1895 (don’t quote me because some say it was in 1887) by Charles Fey, a mechanic from San Francisco. Fey’s simpler version had just three drums with five symbols: diamonds, spades, hearts, horseshoes, and the Liberty Bell. You can even swing in the Nevada State Museum for a look at the original Liberty Bell machine if you’re ever in Carson City.
These Bell machines became widespread in saloons and barbershops across the United States in the very early 1900s. But anti-gambling legislation also became popular around the same time. It was bad enough that by 1910 (when slots were first banned in Nevada), the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago put out a machine that was billed as a trade stimulator. It was a game of chance where people could win cigarettes or candy. In this case, the “prize” was gum.
Slot Machine Cherries No Background Transparent
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Chew on This
Except people usually didn’t take the gum. The real prize was cash; the gum was just there to throw off the authorities. The charade was made complete by taking the playing card-style symbols off the drums and replacing them with the flavors of gum you could “win.” That’s how we ended up with cherries – and oranges, plums and lemons, among other variants. That’s also why slot machines are sometimes referred to as fruit machines, especially in England.
That’s only four symbols, though. The fifth symbol, which used to be the Liberty Bell, was replaced by the familiar “BAR” symbol that we know today. This symbol represented the label on the gum wrapper, which featured the logo of the Bell-Fruit Gum Company. Trivia time: the band “1910 Fruitgum Company” claimed its name from the same wrapper. The Mills Company, in collaboration with Fey, produced 30,000 of these machines.
Rise of the Machines
By nominally offering prizes of gum or other foodstuffs, these slot machine variants were able to continue spreading throughout the United States, but they couldn’t stay ahead of the law forever. Legal cases were brought against many operators of slot machines, and the passing of Prohibition laws in 1920 reduced their footprint even further because the saloons were shut down.
As anti-gambling laws relaxed, the charade with the gum was lifted, but the cherries and the other symbols remain to this day. So do many of the Bell machines. You can even buy one from antique dealers or private collectors if you’re willing to shell out a few thousand bucks. Just don’t expect the gum to be fresh.