12/5/25
Video & Poker…
• 1975 – Walter Fraley invents Fortune Coin, the first video slot machine. It was not successful because players didn’t trust the virtual reels. • 1979 – Si Redd, founder of IGT, leaves Bally Manufacturing on friendly terms to produce a “video poker” machine. He even had an agreement with Bally that they would not enter the video market.
company confidential
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Then everything changed…
• 1984 – Inge Telnaes invents the Virtual Reel Strip mapping to physical reel strips, thus enabling mechanical EGMs to be used with RNGs. This leads to the significantly larger jackpots. • Inge Telnaes proposed a simple solution: Let a random number generator — a computer chip — determine the combination of symbols that appear when the reels stop. • In other words, use a chip to control where the reels stop on a spin, but create the illusion that the wheels stopped on their own.
company confidential
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