Charles Fey

Career and invention

Fey was born in Vöhringen, Kingdom of Bavaria on September9, 1862. His father Karl worked as a sexton at the Ulm Minster cathedral and had fifteen children with Charles' mother Maria. As a teenager, Fey worked for a farming tool manufacturer, gaining his first skills, which heavily influenced his career.

In 1877,

Fey traveled all over the United States and settled in San Francisco, California where he started working at the Western Electric Works company in 1885. Later he started his own company together with Theodore Holtz and Gustav Friedrich Wilhelm Schultze: this company worked with electrical equipment and telephones.

In the 1880s, slot machines required an attendant to make a payout, usually tickets or tokens. Gustav Friedrich Wilhelm Schultze's "Horseshoe Slot Machine" of 1893 was the first machine to include an automatic payout mechanism. or 1897.

Personal life

In San Francisco, Fey met Marie Christine Volkmar, but their courtship was interrupted by illness. In the early 1880s, Fey had been diagnosed with tuberculosis; in accordance with scientific knowledge at the time, he moved to a warmer climate (Mexico) for a few years, before returning to San Francisco for a series of creosote treatments, which were successful. He married Marie in 1889. The couple had three daughters and one son.