A narrow opening for receiving something, as a coin or letter. Also, in aviation, a scheduled time for an aircraft to take off or land at a particular airport.
A thin opening in an object, used to receive mail or postcards: You can put letters and postcards into the slot on the front of the mailbox. Also, in journalism, the job or position occupied by someone: He had the slot as chief copy editor at the Gazette.
The first mechanical slot machine was invented in 1891 by New York-based Sittman and Pitt, and had five drums with 50 symbols on each that a player would try to line up to win a prize. As the machines became more sophisticated and the number of possible combinations increased, manufacturers began to use microprocessors to assign different probabilities to each symbol. That allowed them to make winning combinations seem more frequent than they actually were, and to increase jackpot sizes by making it appear that a certain symbol was “so close” to appearing. Eventually, as the industry switched to video slots, manufacturers included a pay table or help screen that listed the machine’s prize values and which bet sizes corresponded to each. You can find these screens on most modern slot machines by clicking a ‘help’ button or using the ‘i’ feature on the touch screen. Some slot machines also have a dedicated slot attendant to answer questions. The pay table on an electromechanical machine can often be found above and below the reels, while a video slot’s will typically be listed in its help menu.
