The History of Roulette

French mathematician Blaine Pascal is thought to have invented the roulette wheel due to his work on probability and perpetual motion, although this may be a legend of convenience and grandiose rather than the truth. What is certain is that Pascal did not use the wheel for gambling purposes, as its first recorded use is in Paris in 1796, while Pascal lived in the 1600s. The name ‘roulette’ comes from French and is generally translated into ‘little wheel.’

The roulette wheel used in 1796 was virtually the same as wheels used today, having 36 colored and numbered spots as well as two spaces for the zeroes. In 1843, a pair of Frenchmen named François and Louis Blanc came up with a roulette wheel that had only one zero—which lowers the house edge—in an attempt to attract customers. This style of wheel attained worldwide popularity when gambling was outlawed in the 1860s and the Blanc brothers were forced to move their operations to Monte Carlo, where it became known as the “King of Casino Games.” Most places today still use the European wheel with a single zero space.

While the exact date of roulette’s arrival in the United States isn’t known, it was certainly established in gambling locales by the mid-to late-1800s. The original American roulette wheel contained three ‘zero’ boxes, as well as only 28 numbered squares as opposed to the 36 seen in Europe. The third ‘zero’ was often represented as an American eagle. It appears that roulette was first introduced in what would be considered the ‘Wild West’ of the United States, where both gambling and cheating were certainly widespread. Eventually, attempts to regulate the fair use of the roulette wheel led to the layout we see today, where the wheel is mounted on a table and bets are laid out on the board in front of the wheel.