care, the comfort, and the hope that the best in modern medicine can bring. ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] you can watch films on public affairs in their entirety on our weekly series real america, saturday at 10:00 a.m. and sunday at four eastern here on american history tv. >> up next, we visit the nevada historical society museum to look at items from their gaming archives. >> the history of gaming in nevada you can say begins primarily in reno. the northern part of the state was predominant to the 1950's. you have to remember that las vegas wasn't incorporated until

1905. there was very little gaming in the southern part of the state initially. the gaming in the northern part of the state continued to develop primarily along the cities and towns along the railroad lines in the state. or in various towns in the state of nevada. gaming continued to operate in nevada until 1910 when there was a strong social movement that won a referendum and made gaming illegal in october of 1910. at that point, most of the gamblers in reno left for san francisco. in 1919, the attorney general said the poker was legal by the statutes and by 1923, they were

licensing slot machines. in 1931, they legalized all forms of gaming. the only form of gaming that is not permitted in the state of nevada by the constitution is a state lottery. the gaming collection here consists of records of gaming not only in the state of nevada but throughout the united states. the way that occurred is i was fortunate enough between 1995 and 2005 to acquire the records of some of the gaming manufacturing companies. many of them were in chicago. one of them was also out of los angeles. we put those records together along with artifacts we had and they reflected gaming throughout nevada and the united states and

the caribbean. we have the largest collection of original gaming record in of inted eights and possibly the world. you have to remember that when gaming started, it was a contest between the person operating the game and the various players. if you couldn't control the game in the early days, you were probably going to lose your money. the ability of the gambler to basically cheat is what ensure him of a win in the early days of gaming. this eventually chained -- changed and was cleaned up a lot. we have some items here that reflect the earlier days of game -- gaming. we also have one that could be operated by a single dealer. if this were in a small club

or like a basement club during the prohibition, a game like this was easy to operate. in order to control the game, they would use various forms -- special equipment that was primarily loaded dice or tops or various types of dice that can be controlled to ensure a specific outcome. there were other ways to cheat. we have a vast that can hold a card for you up your sleeve. take a deep breath and it will activate the mechanism. another item we have is a dice shop. this would be for a dice cheater who would take some dice off of a table and a substitute dice

that he had prepared that could s for spottedop dice or something like that. it is quite a complete set up. you wonder why anyone would go to the amount of work to have all of this equipment when they could get a normal job and probably make as much money. this was a very profitable way of cheating. over here in our showcase, we talked about how early days of gambling, the gamblers wanted to have an advantage. one of the ways they achieved the equipment or purchased it for cheating was through a number of distributors and manufacturers, many of them primarily in chicago that it out gaming devices such as crooked dice or marked cards. they had a catalog of them. one of the most famous was the kansas city bluebook.

this display we have here has relativeor information to the bluebook. these original illustration drawings were used for the catalogs. we have samples of various types of dice and paraphernalia that they offered. if you come over to this next case, we have some information that pertains to how these products were made. we have a page out of the kansas city bluebook. it shows that a lot of the card marking was done by women because they had the ability to hold a small brush and put small marks on cards. one of the ways they had consistently marked cards was

they created a mastercard which showed all of the marks in a contrasting color. they would use those when they marked a deck of cards. we have a deck that shows where the marks on the cards. we also have edge work. the card on the left has a pointed edge which indicates that is an ace. the card next to it has a slight bump on the design and that indicates it is a king. if you go down all of these marks, youook at the have ace, king, queen, jack, 10. we have a card cutter. it was a traditional way for marking cards that would shorten the side of a card. we also have a corner rounder. when you trim a card, the round edge is destroyed so you have to put around corner back on the card. we have a number of different things including one of the last bluebooks.

the issue of cheating in gaming was largely resolved beginning in the 1940's. when the state of nevada became more active in the control of gambling. one of the issues they had was to clean up gaming. there was a tremendous concern of a state that the federal authorities would come in and if they found cheating, they would institute federal legislation. so they developed rules for gaming that would prevent cheating. today when you think about a gaming house or a casino, it has put millions of dollars invested into the hotel and casino. it is not going to go out and cheat and risk their license. they still have problems today with regards to customers cheating, but the state of nevada's gaming board officers are constantly trying to police gaming to make sure there is no

cheating involved. in the case down here, we have one of the first control board officer's badge. that is sitting next to a small display regard to the black book. the nevada black book is a listing of undesirable individuals who were not allowed access to a casino. you could lose your license if one of these individuals was found in your casino. this display shows one of the original black book entries. by setting the rules, it allows the state to control and ask questions like where is your backing coming from? who is supporting you?

initially, it was very hard for casinos to open in the 1950's because regular banks were reluctant to loan the money for development. the gaming industry went to various things like the teamsters pension fund to obtain funding for the casinos. by 1967, howard hughes came into the state of nevada and one of the effects of him in the state of nevada was that it legitimized gaming operations. by 1974, harrah's had gone public on the stock exchange. that heralded the new era of gaming throughout nevada and eventually throughout the united states. what we have here are things from our educational collection which allows people to look at things, physically handle them. the purpose is to gather, protect, and present the history of gaming.

this allows us to give demonstrations of various types in this instance of things that are considered to be special work for cheating devices. i take a magnet here, i have a cube. it is a magnetic dice. they can also work in the opposite direction. this is a magnetized lead ball. it will stick to the magnet. dice cube unprocessed out of the 20's. this cube is interesting because it has not been spotted yet but you can see there is a mechanical device in the cube itself. by tapping the device solidly against a table, it will shift the center part to one side of the cube to make it special. tap it again to make it

fair. these records allow us to do research into various clubs and casinos that were operating throughout the united states. many of them were unlicensed. that was a different way of they were illegal. a lot of these companies were forced by the commission of the u.s. senate to reveal their records when they were investigating interstate racketeering. also the mcclellan committee of the united date senate. the records represented where gaming was occurring. not only in the state of nevada but throughout the united states. >> our city tour staff weasley visited reno. to watch more, -- recently visited reno. you are watching american history tv, all weekend, every

weekend on c's and three. >> next, historian nigel hamilton talks about the last book in his trilogy profiling president franklin d roosevelt at war. war and peace covers fdr's involvement in planning d-day until his death in 1945. -- on april 12, 19 what he five. the national world war ii museum in new orleans hosted this event. this year marks the 75th anniversary of the allied invasion of normandy, france. >> good evening, everyone. welcome to the national world war ii museum. to all of you who are sitting here and to those watching on the livestream, i know you are with us in spirit. we feel your presence too. i am the senior historian here at the museum. i am also the executive director for the institute of the study of war and democracy. tonight is the latest