in history clips and posts. the c-span cities tour travels the country exploring the american story since 2011. we've been to more than 200 communities across the nation like many americans our staff is staying close to home due to the coronavirus. next a look at one of our city's tour visits. well the history of gaming and in nevada you could say in a sense begins primarily in reno. the northern part of the state was predominant to up till the 1950s. you have to remember that las vegas wasn't incorporated until 1905. 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 a lot of the cities or towns there were along the railroad lines in the state

or in mining camps as they develop such as virginia city or manhattan various. towns in this in of nevada and the gaming continued to operate in nevada until 1910 when there was a strong social movement that actually won a referendum in the state and they 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 by the statutes and by 1923 they were actually licensing slot machines and finally in 1931. i believe it was march 23rd of 1931. they legalized all forms of gaming. the only i believe the only form of gaming this. not permitted in the state of

nevada by the constitution is actually 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 at the 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 la. and we put those records together along with artifacts that they had. and they reflected this they reflected gaming throughout not only nevada, but throughout the united states and the caribbean. and we have the largest collection of original gaming records to my knowledge in the united states possibly in the world. you have to remember that when gaming started. it was kind of a contest between

the person operating the game in the various players and if you couldn't control a game in the early days of gambling and say from the 1850s on and things like that. you're probably going to lose your money. and the the ability of a gambler to basically cheat is what insured 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 a dice wheel. we also have what's called a one-man tub, which is a beat my shake game here that could be operated by a single dealer. so if this were in a small club or in a like a basement club during the prohibition a game like this was easy to operate how in order to control a game like this in the early days, they would use various forms of they would use special equipment

which primarily was loaded dice or tops or various types of dice. it could be controlled put into a game to ensure a certain specific outcome. there are other ways of course to cheat we have a a vest here that can take a card up. hold the card for you and up your sleeve take a deep breath and a little activate the mechanism. another item we have here is what we'd call a dice shop. this would would be for a dice cheater. who could take some dice off of club table? and substitute dice that he had prepared that could be either loads or tops miss spotted dice or things like that, but it's quite a complete setup and you wonder sometimes why anyone would go to the amount of work? to 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. a way of cheating over here in our showcase when 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 are marked cards. and they actually had a catalog of them and one of the more famous catalogs was the kansas city blue book. and this display that we have here has portions or information relative to the the blue book these are original illustration drawings that were used for the catalogs. we have some samples of the 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 blue book 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 well small marks on cards. and one of the ways that they had consistently marked cards. was they created what they call a mastercard which showed all the marks in a contrasting color that they would use when they marked a deck of cards. and they're we have a fan deck here that shows where the marks. the card we also have edgework here. if the card on the left if you notice has appointed edge edge which indicates that's an ace. the card next to it has a slight bump.

on the design by the upper left hand corner and that indicates it's the king. so if you actually go down all these cards and look at the marks you have ace king queen jack 10. we have a card cutter here, which is was a traditional device for marking cards shortening the side of the card. and we also have a corner rounder because once you trim a card the round edge of the card. is destroyed so you have to put a round corner back on the card? we have a number of different things including one of the last 1961 blue books from the kansas city card company. the issue of cheating and gaming was largely resolved beginning in the 1940s. when the state of nevada became much more active in the control of gambling. and one of the issues that they had as they had to clean up gaming. i think there was a tremendous

concern by the state of nevada the federal authorities at some point might come in and if they found cheating and gaming they would institute federal legislation. so the state took it upon themselves to develop. rules for gaming that would prevent cheating and today when you really think about a gaming house casino or operation? is that has put millions of dollars invested into hotel and a casino is not going to go out and cheat and risk their license. these still have problems today with regard to customers cheating and forms of that but the state of nevada's gaming control board officers are constantly trying to police gaming to make certain that there's no cheating involved. in the case down here. we have one of the first control board officers badge. and that's sitting next to a small display with regard to the black book. now the nevada black book is a

listing of what they call undesirable individuals who are not allowed access to a casino. you can lose your license in front of these individuals is found in your casino. and this this particular display shows marshall cafana who is one of the original black book entries and sam giancana. and so by stating setting the for a gaming institution. it allows the state to control it the ask questions like well, where's your backing coming from? who's supporting you? and initially it was very hard and for casinos develop in the 1950s because regular banks were very reluctant to loan the money for development. and so the gaming industry went to various things such as the teamsters pension fund. and obtain funding for a lot of the casinos. but 1967 howard hughes came into

the state of nevada and one of the effects of hughes in the state of nevada was a legitimized gaming operations. and by 1974 harrison actually gone public on the stock exchange and that heralded the new era of gaming and 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 hold them handle them and like this the purpose of the aga is to gather. protect and present the history of gaming and so this allows us to give demonstrations of various types of in this instance things that are considered to be special work or cheating devices. and if you see i take a magnet here you have a dice cube. it's actually a mag dice what

they call magnetic dice. you can all sometimes it works in an opposite direction. now this is a magnetized roulette ball as you can see it'll stick to the magnet. this is an unprocessed. dice cube out of the 20s and this cube here is very interesting because it's what it's called a tap die. this one has not been spotted yet, but you can see there's a mechanical device in the cube itself. and by tapping the dice solidly against a table, it will shift the center part to one side of the cube making it special. you can tap the opposite side and bring it back to fair. these records allow us to do research into various clubs and casinos that were operating throughout the united states many of them as we'd put it on licensed which is a flight word of saying they were illegal. and a lot of these companies at one time 1949 were forced by the

key fowler commission the us senate to reveal their records when they were investigating interstate racketeering interstate gambling and things of that nature all the mcclellan committee. of the united states senate so the records represented where gaming was occurring. not only in the state of nevada, but throughout the united states. you can watch this and other programs on the history of communities across the country at c-span.org cities tour. this is american history tv only on c-span 3. according to the us state department president franklin d roosevelt took office intent to improve relations with the nations of central and south america developing the good neighbor policy with a goal of emphasizing trade in cooperation rather than military force next on real america a 1944 film reflecting that policy the

bridge documenting the economic and political importance of latin america to the united states the film highlights mineral and agricultural riches of the region and details the problems of poverty and inadequate transportation. the bridge is part of ♪