In This Issue - Society for the History of Technology

SHOT Newsletter 4
July 2006
(including 6 million conventioneers) spent over $36
billion dollars in Las Vegas. Seventeen of the world's
twenty largest hotels are located along the Strip, and
there are over 130,000 hotel rooms in the Las Vegas
market. The Imperial Palace has 2,635 rooms,
making it relatively small by modern Strip standards.
The casinos listed above as being within a ten-minute
walk contain over 31,000 rooms, total. (In the
morning, as you enjoy your coffee, pause to imagine
31,000 sets of sheets being changed within a halfmile
radius of you.) The modern gigantist phase of
Las Vegas resort architecture is less than 20 years
old, having largely commenced with the opening of
the Mirage in 1989. The earlier mob-dominated Las
Vegas Strip of the 1950s and 1960s featured low,
sprawling resorts with plenty of parking, oriented to
automobile visitors. (The Strip itself was originally
the long highway into Las Vegas from Los Angeles.)
Las Vegas was formed in 1905 by the railroad, which
still runs through the area, and it remained a sleepy
desert town until the beginning of construction on
Hoover Dam in 1931, coincidentally the same year
that Nevada legalized gambling. The economic
activity generated by the dam's construction, and later
by tourists flocking to see the new engineering
wonder, kept Las Vegas relatively insulated from the
effects of the Great Depression. In the early 1940s,
additional significant federal investments in the area,
in the form of an Army Air Force training base (now
Nellis Air Force Base) and a huge magnesium
production plant, Basic Magnesium, Inc., further
bolstered the Las Vegas economy. 1941 also saw the
construction of the first casino/resort on what became
the Strip.
Eric Nystrom
Johns Hopkins University
SHOT BUSINESS MEETING
The SHOT Business Meeting will be held on
Saturday, October 14 from 5:15-6:00 p.m. All
members are invited to attend.
SHOT Website Annual Meeting Page
Our main SHOT website:
http://www.historyoftechnology.org has a button
connecting to the SHOT annual meeting webpage:
http://www.historyoftechnology.org/Annual_
Meeting/Annual_Meeting_Main_Page.htm
This page contains links to the program (with paper
and session abstracts where available), the conference
schedule, registration information, plus details on SIG
(Special Interest Group) meetings, receptions, the
SHOT business meeting, SHOT tours, etc. Details on
hotel reservations and local information are also
available here. We will be updating the annual
meeting page frequently with additional information
so please check back at regular intervals.
REGISTRATION
You will find a form to register for the annual
meeting further on in this newsletter. Please complete
the form and mail or fax it to the SHOT Secretary's
office with your payment by check or with your
credit card information. There is no online
registration. Please write very legibly. It may be
impossible to process your payment and registration
if we cannot read your credit card number, phone
number, or email address.
Please mail your form to:
SHOT Office/Cynthia Bennet—Registration
History Department
618 Ross Hall
Iowa State University
Ames, IA 50011
Or fax your form to:
515-294-6390
Please put "for SHOT" on your cover page.
The deadline for early registration is September 8,
2006. Presenters must submit their registrations by
September 8 to guarantee their spot on the program.
The SHOT office will confirm your registration.