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From the traditional fruit machines of old to the highly interactive games driven by sci-fi like technology, it’s fair to say that the typical slot machine game has come a long, long way in a short, short space of time.

Indeed, it was only just over a century ago, in 191 when two Americans by the name of Sittman and Pitt put their wits together to come up with a gambling device which served as the blueprint for today's slot machines.

Early machines

Back then, Sittman and Pitt machine took its cues from the traditional card game of Poker, with five drum-like devices flipping over a full deck of cards, with wins coming when a player landed a decent hand.

Such was the popularity of this game that bars and gaming houses across New York were soon clamouring for one of their own, and as such, the popularity of slot games slowly but surely began to take off.

Not these early forerunners were anything close to perfect. Still based primarily on Poker, it proved nigh on impossible to find a way of paying out appropriate amounts for all the many and various ways to win at Poker. Eventually, it took a mechanic from San Francisco, California by the name of Charles Fey to take those primitive devices and modify them into a the kind of slot machine we know and love today,

To do this, Fey did away with the Poker stuff and instead replaced it with a three-reel, five-line set up -still common in countless physical and online slot games today- to make managing payouts much easier.

Into the modern era

As the decades past, Slot machines continued to evolve. Video was incorporated, along with several other advanced features, resulting in all new, high-tech ways of playing such as those found in the game genie jackpots and its contemporaries.

What’s more, for all intents and purposes, this is only the beginning. Sure, slot games have come a long way in the past century, but if there’s anything that’s truly evident here, it’s that as modern technology advances, so too do those games. Living in an age where just about anything’s possible thanks to technology, can you even begin to imagine where the evolution of slot games might take us next?