In the begining casinos installed the pokies machine as a diversion and to appeal to more novice gamblers, unlike table games which requires some form of skill, pokies machines do not require huge amounts of skill to play. The Idea from casinos led to a boom of online pokies and land based pokies going as far as being settup around pubs, for the ever popular pub pokies.
The technology behind a pokie machine is remarkable due to the process it takes from pushing the spin button, or pulling the lever, to recieving a winning combination of reels. The pokies player spins the reels and a win or loss is determinded by the set winnings (payout) table of images displayed. There is a CPU attached and it determines, RANDOMLY, when to payout (progressive pokies) , it generatates a large string of random numbers all the time, even on idle.