Many of us still crave that metallic “ ting ting ting” that has gone silent on so many gaming floors. This trend has been accelerated by the pandemic, as several casinos removed their remaining coin-operated games during the shutdown.įor many long-time gamblers, a slip of paper just doesn’t have the same allure or vintage feel that a bucket full of metal tokens does. inserting and taking payment with coins and tokens.Īs such, most casinos have moved to convert their coin slot machines and video poker to TITO operation because it is easier for the house, and less expensive. Gameplay is also much faster when players use modern Ticket-in Ticket-out (TITO) technology vs. In addition to maintenance, backfilling machines with coinage, and the requirement to handle all those coins is burdensome for the casino. It won’t surprise you that coin dispensing slots, with their million moving parts, require a significant amount of maintenance. The machine itself was mechanical in nature and operated by a series of levers and spinning reels.
The inventor Charles Fey was a mechanical engineer who named the original slot machine the Liberty Bell. Over the years, the endorphin-triggering sound of coins hitting a metal tray has disappeared from casino floors across Las Vegas for a number of reasons. The first slot machine was built in 1895 in San Francisco.