Kelly had originally titled his article "Information Theory and Gambling." That bothered some AT&T executives, as did his mention of a "private wire." Throughout the twentieth century, AT&T had leased wires to organized crime figures who ran "wire services" reporting racetrack results to bookies. Even in the 1950s, bookies were still big customers. The executives feared the press might conclude from Kelly's article that Bell Labs was doing work to benefit illegal gamblers. They pressured Kelly to change the title of his paper to "A New Interpretation of Information Rate."
In fact, the executives didn't have much to worry about. Virtually no one took much note of the article when it first appeared. The practical application of the Kelly criterion began in the early 1960s, after MIT student Ed Thorp told Shannon about his card-counting system for blackjack. Shannon referred him to Kelly's article. Thorp used it to compute optimal bets in blackjack and later in the securities markets. It was Thorp's success as hedge fund manger that made Wall Street start to take notice of the Kelly criterion.
Kelly died tragically young, of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 41. He was by then the head of Bell Labs' information coding and programming department and the author of several patents.
