Wednesday, June 15, 2005
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5:58 p.m.
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The first gambling machine to catch on was a vending machine for chewing gum introduced by the Mills Novelty Company in 1910. It dispensed three flavors of gum—cherry, orange, and plum—depending on which fruits appeared on three randomly spinning wheels. If three bars reading “1910 Fruit Gum” appeared in a row, the machine gave extra gum; if a lemon appeared, it gave no gum at all (which is why “lemon” came to mean something unsatisfactory or defective). You can’t get gum in a slot machine anymore—the 1910 Fruit Gum machines were so popular that the company converted them to cash payouts.
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