Slot machines

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy

BBC

Business

4.8 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2020

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

First developed by a toy company in the 1890s, slot machines have become one of the most profitable tools of the gambling trade - but many who play them say winning isn't the point. So why can't people pull themselves away? Tim Harford looks under the spinning wheels and flashing lights to see what these devices reveal about the business of addiction.

Transcript

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0:00.0	50 Things That Made The Modern Economy With Tim Harford
0:17.0	Molly's first job as a young teenager was dispensing change for slot machines on a military
0:23.8	base.
0:25.8	By the time she hit middle age, Molly was no longer earning her wages from the slots.
0:31.3	She was feeding her entire paycheck into them in two-day binges.
0:35.8	I even cashed in my life insurance for more money to play.
0:42.2	That's what she told Natasha Dow Schull in a hotel room high above the Las Vegas strip.
0:50.6	Schull is an anthropologist who's been studying the world of slot machines for two decades.
0:57.2	Slot machines are no toy.
1:00.3	They are fantastically profitable and they've grown like an invasive species.
1:08.4	Molly spends so much on the slot machines that a Vegas hotel has invited her to stay there
1:14.0	free of charge.
1:16.2	Is Molly hoping for a big win?
1:18.8	Natasha Dow Schull asks?
1:21.6	No. She knows there's no chance of that.
1:24.6	The thing people never understand is that I'm not playing to win.
1:29.5	A gambler who doesn't care about winning?
1:32.3	That doesn't seem right.
1:34.0	But we've long struggled to appreciate what slot machines really are and the lesson they
1:39.4	have to teach us about the modern economy.
1:43.9	slot machines are generally reckoned to have appeared in the US around 1890.
1:49.4	The ideal toy company of Chicago made one with five spinning drums, each with ten playing
	...

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