But the casino engineers on the Strip went to work. They refined the simple slot machine, then expanded it into an entire universe of electronic games of unparalleled potency. The games grew much more profitable than anything else on a casino floor, coming to occupy more and more space with each passing year. “Right now,” sociologist Bo Bernhard told an audience at a gaming conference in 2000, “somewhere out there in a casino, a blackjack table is being sawed down to make room for machines.”[44]
