Casinos originally were public halls for music and dancing. Not until the second half of the 19th century the term came to mean a collection of gaming rooms. For long the world’s best-known casino opened 1861 in Monte Carlo.
Nowadays casinos have an almost uniform character throughout the world. In the United States, legal casinos were long available only in Las Vegas and other locations in Nevada, where certain forms of commercialized gambling were permitted by the law.
The Las Vegas economy is dependent on the large, luxurious casinos that have operated there since the late 1940s. Casino gambling was introduced in Atlantic City, N.J., in 1978.
From the 1980s casinos also began appearing on various American Indian reservations, which are not subject to state antigambling statutes. Other legal casinos are located on riverboats or by special license in Puerto Rico.
