I'd imagined the Magic 8 Ball, in some incarnation, would have been around for quite some time. In fact it first made an appearance in a 1940's Three Stooges short, as a comical fortune telling device called a Magic Ball.

The ball we recognise today, with the answer popping up in a floaty, blue pool of disappointment, was invented by Albert C Carter, inspired by his clairvoyant mother. Back then in the late 1940s & early 1950s it was called a Syco-Seer, and had a clear casing. It was Chicago's Brunswick Billiards who commissioned a black & white eight ball version to be made, and it's popularity ensured the design remained.

Whilst most Eight Ball toys on the market are the regular black & white variety, there are some interesting themed versions. I wonder did the Hannah Montana Eight Ball see Miley 2013 coming?

Your teenage years were not complete without an afternoon sitting shaking a Magic 8 Ball asking it would you marry your latest crush, and reshaking until you got the answer you actually wanted.

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Today millions of people play slots games online. Of all the casino games played online, slots are probably one of the most popular as the games are quick and easy to play, and you can play for pennies at a time. In fact you can even play for free on many casino sites, where you can play in demo mode with virtual coins rather than real money.

There are slots to suit all tastes – including those that are themed on superheroes, TV shows, film characters. Many casinos host the same slots games, so some of the progressive jackpots can be huge amounts. Click here for more information on slot games.

Of course, although many slots online feature more than fifty pay lines at a time, you’ll also find online slots that bear greater resemblance to the original slot machines of the late19th century. Slots were actually invented as a way of playing a game that had a similarity to poker, but could be played as a one-player game. The first slot machine attempts had five reels but this presented a difficulty as there were too many possible combinations.

The original trial machines needed simplifying and the first person to do this was a man called Charles Fey, who lived and worked in San Francisco. Fey invented a slot machine that had three wheels and five symbols on each wheel, which reduced the number of possible symbol combinations to a manageable amount. The first slot machine of Fey’s that was a real success was the Liberty Bell, and it’s for that reason that many of the slots today still feature the bell symbol. The Liberty Bell featured diamonds, hearts, spades, horseshoes and the Liberty Bell. There was an automatic pay mechanism with the top prize being fifty cents when the reels stopped to reveal three bells in a row.

Similar early slot machines featured fruit symbols on the reels and paid out fruity chewing gum as prizes, hence the reason that they earned themselves the name ‘fruit machines’.Chewing gum was offered as a prize to get around strict US gambling laws which made gaming illegal. The ‘BAR’ symbol that is still found on slots machines both online and off today was the symbol of the Bell-Fruit Gum Co.

You can still find vintage slot machines or one-armed banditsof different types on sale in antique fairs around the world, and you’ll also find them on Ebay, both in working condition and various states of repair. You can even buy spare parts – like the side lever or arm that was used to set the reels in motion on the original machines. There are two reasons whyslots machines used to be called one-arm bandits – firstly because the side lever was the way to get the reels spinning, but secondly because it was said that these machines could leave you as penniless as a real bandit would.

Of course, the vintage slots won’t win you a fortune, but they make great conversation pieces!