tv History of Gambling CSPAN May 4, 2021 7:47pm-8:02pm EDT
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so actually there was very little gaming in the southern part of the state initially. and 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 mining camps as they developed, such as virginia city or manhattan, various towns in the state of nevada. and the gaming continued to operate in nevada until 1910, when there was a strong social movement that actually won a referendum and made gaming illegal in october of 1910. and, at that point, most of the gamblers in the city of reno got on the train and left for san francisco. in 1919, the attorney general said that poker was legal by the statutes, and by 1923, they were licensing slot machines. in 1931, i believe march 23 of
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19 31, they legalized all forms of gaming. i believe the only form of gaming that is not permitted in the state of nevada by the constitution is a state lottery. well, the gaming collection here consists of records of gaming not only in the state of nevada but throughout the united states. and the way that occurred is i was fortunate enough between about 1995 and 2005 to acquire the records of some of the gaming -- major gaming manufacturing companies. many of them were in chicago. one of them was also out of los angeles. and we put those records together along with artifacts that they had and they reflected gaming throughout not only nevada, but throughout the united states and the caribbean. and we have the largest collection of original gaming
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records, to my knowledge, in the united states and possibly the world. you have to remember that when gaming started, it was kind of a contrast -- kind of a contest between the person operating the game and the various players. and, if you couldn't control the game in the early days of gambling, say from 1850 on and things like that, you were probably going to lose your money. and the ability of the gambler to basically cheat is what ensured him of a win in the early days of gaming. this eventually changed and was cleaned up a lot. we have some items here that reflect the earlier days of gaming. this is the dice wheel. we also have the one-man tub, which could be operated by a single dealer. so if this were in a small club , or like a basement club during
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the prohibition, a game like this was easy to operate. now, in order to control a game like this in the early days, they would use various forms of -- they would use special equipment that was primarily loaded dice or tops or various types of dice that could be controlled, put into a game to ensure a specific outcome. there were other ways to cheat. we have a vest here that can hold a card for you up your sleeve. take a deep breath and it will activate the mechanism. another item we have here is what we would call a dice shop. this would be for a dice cheater who could take some dice off of a club table and substitute dice that he had prepared that could be either loads or tops, spotted
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dice, things like that. it is quite a complete set up. you wonder, sometimes why anyone , would go through the amount of work to have all this equipment when they could get a normal job and probably make as much money. but actually, 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 that they achieved the equipment or purchased the equipment for cheating was through a number of distributors and manufacturers, many of them primarily in the chicago area, that put out gaming devices such as crooked dice or marked cards. they actually had a catalog of them. one of the more famous catalogs was the kansas city bluebook. this display we have here has
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portions or information relative to that, 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 here, we have some information that pertains to how these products were made. we have a page out of the kansas city bluebook. and it shows that a lot of the card marking was done by women because they had the ability to hold a very small brush, put very small marks on cards. and one of the ways they had consistently marked cards was they created what they call a mastercard, which showed all the marks in a contrasting color they would use those when they marked a deck of cards. we have a fan deck here that
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shows where the marks on the cards. we also have edge work here. the card on the left, if you notice, has a pointed edge, , the card next to it has a slight bump on the design on the upper left hand corner that indicates it is a king. so if you actually go down all of these cards, have a, scheme, queen, jack, tim. we have a card cutter here which was a traditional device for marking cards, shortening the side of card. we also have a corner rounder, because once he trim a card, around edge of the card is destroyed so you have to put a round quarterback only card. we have a number of different things including one of the last 1961 blue books-y.
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the issue of cheating in gaining was largely resolved i beginning in the 1940s when the state of nevada became much more active in the control of gambling at one of the issues they had is they had to clean up counting. i think there was a tremendous concern of the state of nevada that the federal authorities might come in if they found cheating, they would institute federal legislation so the state took it upon themselves rules of gaming i to police gaming to make sure there is no cheating involved.
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constantly trying to make sure that there is no cheating involved. in the case down here we have one of the first control board officers badge a. and that is sitting next to a small display with regard to the block book. the nevada block book is a listing of what they call undesirable individuals who are not allowed access to a casino. you could lose your license if one of these individuals was found in your casino. this particular display shows marshall a final was one of the original black book entries and stand gia cana. by stating or setting the rules for gaming institution, and allows the state to control and ask questions like, where is your backing coming from? who is supporting you? and michelle e., it was very
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hard for casinos sure who developed in the 19 fifties because regular banks were reluctant to loan them money for development. and so the gaming industry went to various things like the teamster's pension fund to obtain funding for a lot of the casinos. by 1967, howard hughes came into the state of nevada and one of the effects of hues in the state of nevada was that a delegitimized gaming operations. by 1974, harris had actually gone public on the stock exchange, and that heralded the new era of gaming throughout nevada and eventually of course throughout the united states. what we have here are things from our educational collection which allows people to look at things, physically handle them and hold them like this. the purpose of the a.g. a is to gather, protect, and present
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the history of gaming. so this allows us to give demonstrations of various types, in this instance of things that are considered to be special work for cheating devices. is you see, i take a magnet here, i have a day's cube. it's actually magnetic this a mag dice. it could also work in the opposite direction sometimes. this is a magnetize ledell, as you see it'll stick to the magnet. this is and un-processed dice cube out of the twenties. this cube here is very interesting because once called the top to. it is not been spot a yuppie can see there is a mechanical device and the cube itself. but topping the dice solidly against a table, it will shift the senator to one side of the cube to make it special. you can talk tap the opposite side to make it come back.
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>> these records allow us to do research into various clubs and casinos that were operating throughout the night states, many of them unlicensed. a lot of these companies were forced by the commission of the u.s. senate, 1949, to reveal their records. they were in investigating interstate racketeering. also the mcclelland committee of the united states senate. the records represented or gaming was occurring, not only in the state of nevada but throughout the united states.
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