When was roulette invented?

Answer 1

The word 'roulette' is derived from the words 'small wheel' in French so it's safe to assume that a Frenchman had something to do with the invention of the game. Blaise Pascal is credited with the invention of a primitive roulette game in his quest for a perpetual motion machine in the 17th century. However, the roulette wheel itself is believed to be a combination of a number of Old English, French and Italian games that already existed. The earliest description of the roulette wheel can be found in a French novel 'La Roulette , Ou Le Jour' and this is in 1796. However the earliest reference to the game can be found in 1758 in New France (now Quebec) which actually bans a gambling game called roulette. The European form of roulette (1 green 0 rather than the 0 and 00 in the 'American' version) has been traced back to the German town of Homburg. It is still credited to two Frenchmen though, Francois and Louis Blanc. The single 0 was introduced to increase the odds in the favour of the gambler and hence make it a more attractive option the 00 style of the game. There were even roulette wheels in America that had a 0 and 00 and an American eagle. And when the ball landed in one of these sections the house claimed all bets on the table. When the Germans (one of the largest empires in Europe at the time) outlawed gambling in the 1860's gambling and the roulette wheel moved to the south of France and took hold in Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo quickly became a place where the elite and the rich of the time came to gamble and is still synonymous with the casino today. Meanwhile, at this time, roulette was travelling north through the USA beginning in New Orleans. It was here, because of cheating both by gamblers and operators that roulette became a table top game and it was also here that the roulette wheel as we know it today became standardised.