The Sports Betting Revolution Started With a Nuclear Engineer

Mike Kent, probably the first person to bet on sports using a computer, began his career testing top-secret nuclear reactor designs at a Westinghouse facility in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania. In the early 1970s, that involved pushing punch cards through a reader connected to a mainframe computer. The strips of paper came out coded, marked with tiny holes.

Illustration: Carolina Moscoso for Bloomberg Businessweek

Although Kent was short-sighted, overweight and asthmatic, he was fiercely competitive, known to drub his 5-year-old nephew at chess and tear at his clothes in frustration while watching his beloved Pittsburgh Steelers. He was also a proud member of the Westinghouse softball ...