Indy Gaming: Mathewson remembered as an industry founder and community benefactor

by Howard Stutz

Former IGT Chairman and CEO Chuck Mathewson at the company's showroom in a 2008 photo. (Courtesy of IGT)

At first, Chuck Mathewson viewed his initial investments into slot machine developer International Game Technology as a short-term deal.

However, IGT founder Si Redd asked him to join the board of the Reno-based company during the early 1980s and take a larger role in the operations. Mathewson figured the commitment wouldn’t last too long.

“He really thought it was going to be kind of a short-lived situation where he could fix a couple of things (at IGT) and sell out of it at a profit,” his son Robert Mathewson recalled in a recent interview.

More than 40 years later, Charles “Chuck” Mathewson, who died last week at his home in Reno at age 93, is remembered as a gaming pioneer whose leadership of IGT brought an industry-wide technology change to the slot machine floor. He helped transform IGT from a small Northern Nevada gaming machine manufacturer into the industry’s worldwide standard-bearer.

Mathewson was inducted into the Gaming Hall of Fame in 1997.

“Charles, or ‘Chuck' as he was known to his friends, demonstrated throughout his extraordinary life the art of the possible and helped make Nevada into what it is today,” former governor and UNR President Brian Sandoval said in a statement.

Mathewson and IGT donated a combined $10 million toward construction of the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center at UNR, one of the most technologically advanced university libraries in the country. UNR is in the process of developing the Mathewson University Gateway — the future home of the school’s College of Business, a life sciences building and a third-yet-to-be determined building.

Read the entire article at The Nevada Independent: https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/indy-gaming-mathewson-remembered-as-an-industry-founder-and-community-benefactor