Technological change and shifting industrial leadership in the US gaming machine industry, 1965-95 Mirko Ernkvist Work in Progress: Please do not cite Note: This paper is a chapter from my upcoming dissertation about the US gaming machine manufacturing industry during the period 1965-2000. It is a work in progress, please do not cite. As a work in progress, this version might also contain errors that might be corrected later. A full list of references of the entire work, not only this chapter, is provided at the end of the paper. The theoretical framework for the study will be outlined at the presentation. If you are interested in a full copy of the dissertation, please contact the author on email:
[email protected] Introduction to paper Gaming machines have come to dominate US casinos and currently offer the single largest forms of gambling in the US in terms of revenue. Through both legalization and the technological development in electronics. the gaming machine industry has grown rapidly since the middle of the 1970s onward. New market segments have also been created in the process. Initially, spinning reel-gaming machines dominated the market, but by the end of the 1970s, video poker and other video- based gaming machines made inroads into the market, followed in the late 1980s by gaming machines connected through statewide networks called Wide Area Progressive games. Despite the size of the market, the extensive technological change the industry has experienced and its importance as leisure consumption, the business history of the firms that manufacture gaming machine has thus far received little academic attention.