Gambling is a recreational activity prevalent in society today. Young and old alike, people are getting hooked to what today’s society calls as the game of the lucky ones.
Generally, gambling refers to any form of activities that involves taking the risk of betting the money or any kind of tangible items of value, which sometimes depend on chance or the skill of somebody to manipulate the game.
Since its inception, the profitability that gambling can offer to an individual is endless. That is why gambling had continuously dominated the world of chances.
However, even if gambling like blackjack, poker, and slot machines are so popular these days, people still don’t have any idea how it started and who started it.
Here’s a list of the people who, in some way or another, contributed to the development of gambling.
- The first ever slot machine, known as the Liberty Bell, was invented by Charles Fey in 1985. Fey was a car mechanic in San Francisco when he thought of inventing the Liberty Bell.
The first form of slot machine was made of three spinning wheels that had three featured shapes: spades, diamonds, and hearts plus a ‘cracked’ Liberty Bell drawn at each reel.
It was on 1907 when an arcade-like machine maker based in Chicago had thought of reproducing machines similar to that of Fey’s. The manufacturer was named Henry Stephen Mills. The machine was called Operator Bell.
It was from this point that the slot machines have evolved until today’s form.
- In card games such as blackjack, nobody can ever tell how the game started and who started it. This is because nobody tried to record it for the purpose of history.
However, there were people who conceptualized the basic strategy for playing blackjack.
It was in 1958 when Cantey, McDermott, Maisel and Baldwin had devised a strategy that caused such commotion with both the statisticians and the gamblers themselves.
These four people have created the basic strategy in playing the game all using their hand calculators. After which, they created a book known as ‘Winning Blackjack,’ which is now considered as one of the most valuable strategies in playing blackjack.
In turn, this gave birth to what modern gambling now calls as the ‘card counting techniques.’
These are the people who have made the gambling world truly a phenomenon. Though, there are people who do not accept them as great inventors because of the negative effects of gambling in the society today. Nevertheless, they have contributed a lot in gambling.