Charles Fey

Brief Bio

Charles Fey was born in Vohrigen, a small village Bavaria that was an independent country but later was merged with Germany. He was the youngest among the family with 16 children and his birth name was August Fey.

After the age of 14, Fey used to work in farm tools manufacturing factory which was situated in Munich, a nearby the village. That summer gave August Fey an expertise in dealing with the machines and mechanical devices and he loved to do so.

In his early age of 15, he decided to leave his home due to some reasons. Firstly, he desperately wanted to make a distance from his strictly disciplined father and the other reason was he did not want to join the German army. He took this brave decision following his uncle who had done the same earlier and succeeded in reaching New Jersey (USA).

He decided to break his trip of USA in parts because he did not have enough money. He firstly decided to stay at France; when arrived there he was 15 years old and worked in intercom manufacturing company. He managed to save some money and then moved to England, he made it home for five years and worked with nautical instruments manufacturers.

The Americanization of Charles Fey

After a hard struggle, Fey reached America and made it home for short period of time and he used to stay with his uncle who was an affectionate person. After some time his uncle decided to come back to Germany and he did so. Fey’s loneliness made him to move California from east coast.

After his arrival at San Francisco in 1885, he got a job in California Electric Work Company and married with Volkmer. In 1889 he decided to be called as “Charles August Fey”, which sounds more like American names. He is famous as Charles Fey in the history of slot machines.

The Invention of Slot Machine:

1895 was the year when Liberty Bell was built by the Charles Fey, known to be first slot machine of the globe. The response of the machine was far more successful beyond his expectations and he was compelled to work day and night to produce more and more slot machines. After that he suddenly left the job and set up his own company “Charles Fey and Company”.

The slot machines manufactured by Fey’s company became popular and known as fruit machine, because usually his machine held images of cherries, oranges and lemons. Fey participated actively in the company’s progress till 1944 and got retired at the age of 82. This great inventor of fruity machine died 10 months later due to pneumonia.

Today’s online machines are built following the design and rules of Fey’s slot machines and hundreds of thousands of people enjoy real as well as online slot machines every year.