by Marshall Fey
Sixth Edition, 256 pp. Liberty Belle Books, 2006, $35.00
If you happen to be strolling by 406 Market Street in San Francisco, you’ll find a historical memorial with a brass plaque on it stating that Charles August Fey – otherwise known as Grandpa Charlie – began manufacturing slots on that site in 1894. It goes on to state that he invented the first three-reel slot machine, the Liberty Bell, in 1898.
Today, the building is gone, destroyed in the earthquake and fires of 1906.
Marshall Fey inherited 28 slot machines from his grandfather, Grandpa Charlie, and by the late 1950s, Marshall and his brother Frank were operating a Bay Area beer joint called the Swinging Door. But they had a problem – the slot machines they were sitting were illegal to own then in California. The brothers were looking at a fine of $500 for each machine, if not jail time. Rather than disposing of their slot legacy, the Marshalls moved to Reno, NV, where in 1958 they opened the Liberty Belle saloon and restaurant. What better way to decorate their new establishment than with antique slot machines?
The Liberty Bell
Marshall began collecting everything he could get his hands on. Eventually, the restaurant and its entire attic were full of old machines. It was perhaps the best collection of vintage slots in the world.
To celebrate his grandfather and the history of slots, Marshall wrote the first edition of Slot Machines. All the photos – and there are hundreds in the book -were from their Liberty Belle collection. Later editions were subtitled The First 100 Years and now this latest, America’s Favorite Gaming Device. I reviewed this book almost a decade ago for another publication, but many of the comments I made then are still relevant:
When I started in this business, one of my early mentors said that everything I needed to know about slot machines was in Marshall Fey’s Slot Machines book. That first edition came out in 1983, but the subject of the book was from an even earlier period, largely covering devices from the late 19th Century through until the post-War years.
At the time, I thought the advice was patronizing. The slot machines that Fey’s grandfather had pioneered were marvels of springs and levers, but I saw little connection to or relevance with the EPROM-controlled machines of today. In my novice opinion, there was no way the hip baby boomer crowd would respond to the same stimulus that motivated the flappers of the Roaring Twenties or the Silent Generation crowd of GIs & Rosie Riveters from the 1940s.
As my career progressed, I came to realize that that advice was timeless and golden. There wasn’t any magic in Fey’s book – although it should be on every casino executive’s shelf – but what came through was the simple truth that we must constantly examine our history to see if any lessons still apply. I’ll argue that the basic human qualities that define entertainment and amusement have remained constant; it is our challenge to see if technology can restore, revive, or enhance some of them.
There are countless examples in the book. Fractional penny machines developed in Australia by Aristocrat fed the boom of today’s low-denom video games, offering highly volatile and extremely popular machines. However, the concept of two plays for a penny is right there in the book: the 1894 Watson Combination Card and Dice machine.
Think five-reelers are new? Mills first produced a double five-reeler in 1940. Multi-denom slot machines were first released on numerous upright wheel machines of the 1890s, and many will argue – with some merit – that these same machines were the inspiration for the legendary Wheel of Fortune.
Just a few of the hundreds of slots that were housed in the Liberty Belle restaurant before it closed in 2006.
Ernie Moody, the founder of Action Gaming, revolutionized video poker by introducing the Three Play Poker, and later Five Play, in the late 1990s. Ernie most certainly came up with these concepts on his own, but if he needed any inspiration, it could be found on the Quinette machine made by Caille in 1901. It displayed five poker hands at a time with mechanical cards. Several other games of the day offered “skill stops” to freeze the cards or reels.
Taking time to look at concepts that worked in the past may be the quickest and easiest way to navigate the uncertain times of today. Was an old contest or promotion abandoned because it was too labor intensive? Did new regulations prohibit a marketing scheme? Did a good concept simply outlive its lifecycle? Or was it something else? And can today’s technology make what was old, new again?
In 1928, Caille added the first true jackpot to a slot machine. It was a simple cup of coins that spilled out when the jackpot bars were aligned. Bally upped the ante in 1963 with their “Money Honey” model that featured a large “coin hopper” billed as a “bottomless payout.” The basic idea was to make a lot of commotion and get more coins in the player’s hands quickly to impress nearby gamblers and allow the winners to put their jackpot right back in the slot. Today, we’ve perfected the “big” payout, but along the way we’ve lost some of the excitement and all the immediacy. By the time the currency is counted, Title 31 forms are completed, EPROMs are verified, something has been lost. Why not use today’s technology to bring back the instant winner with a “cashless payouts” or a “key to credit” strategy that legally delays the money laundering paperwork and gets the player back into action sooner?
You can find these concepts, and many more, in either this Sixth Edition or the earlier ones, all of which are fairly easily found on Amazon or eBay. But if you’re at all intrigued, why not buy a signed edition direct from the author? What could be better than getting an autographed book, written by a slot legend, who’s the grandson of another slot legend – and, by the way, making sure that all of the money for his labor goes directly into his pocket and not Jeff Bezos’?
Marshall is now 92 and told me recently that his warranty has probably expired. His voice is a little weaker than when he was serving prime rib at the Liberty Belle, but he’s still selling and signing books as strong as ever. He can be reached by email at mfey@LibertyBelleBooks.com.
Or you can go full old school and write a snail mail to him at his shop:
Liberty Belle Book Store
2925 West Moana Lane
Reno, NV 89509
The book is $35 plus $6 shipping. Marshall’s autograph is free.
