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Origins of the Roulette Wheel
The origins of the Roulette wheel date back as far as the late 17th Century and are associated with the famous mathematician Blaise Pascal. Blaise Pascal was fascinated with the idea of perpetual motion and in one of his experiments developed a wheel that could be sent spinning, while sitting horizontally on a table or surface. He added pockets to this wheel and sent a ball spinning in the opposite direction. This was the start of the Roulette wheel. Pascal developed his idea by adding numbers to the pockets thereby making it into a game, he used 36 numbers from 1-36. The idea of the basic game was that players would guess where the ball would come to rest once the roulette wheel had stopped spinning. Pascal further developed his wheel by adding colors to the pockets; he gave some of the numbers red backgrounds and some of them black backgrounds. There was no order to the way the numbers were placed around the roulette wheel. Pascal's wheel was quickly adopted by many Frenchmen who gave it the name Roulette which means "small wheel". By the very late 1700's Roulette had become the most popular casino game to play thanks to the ever present Roulette wheel.
The Development of the Roulette Wheel
In 1842 two Frenchmen by the names of Francois and Lois Blanc added to the original roulette wheel, they added a zero, "0". This increased the odds of the casino and made the game even more popular with all the casino owners who adopted Roulette as their flagship game. By the late 1800's the Roulette wheel had become integrated into most if not all casinos as the number one game to be played, it also made its way across the ocean to the United States. In America, the casino owners were even thriftier and added another zero to the wheel giving even higher odds to the casino. Since then the differences between the American and European Roulette wheel have been clearly defined. The American roulette wheel being the one with the two zeros "00". The Americans were also responsible for the change of the color of the zero pockets, the players felt that the zero was not visible enough and needed to stand out more so they changed the wheel to have green pockets for the zeros; this was also adopted by the Europeans.
The Modern Roulette Wheel
By the middle of the 20th Century, Roulette had spread all over the globe and so had the manufacture of the wheels. Players were not only interested in the game itself but also the type and quality of the wheel. Players believed that if the wheel was polished wood versus reinforced aluminum it could make a difference to their game. There were many worries about wheels being weighted on one side which would give a natural gravitational advantage to one side of numbers over the other. Players would try and work out which was the heavy side of the roulette wheel and which was the light side. As a result serious players only played in the reputable casinos where they were sure the wheels were not weighted.
The Online Roulette Wheel
With the explosion of the internet in the 1990's online casinos adopted Roulette as one of their flagship games, its wheel being a worldwide recognizable symbol that was synomonous with classy gambling. Although with roulette online, it was not possible to actually touch the glossy wheel every other aspect of the wheel was transported to the computer screen. The "whoosh" of the wheel as it spun, the colors of the pockets as they spin in front of your eyes and the little blob that is the ball speeding around the wheel until it slowly comes to rest. The graphics and illusions on the computer screen made the Roulette wheel even more attractive and exciting, if that is possible. Playing Roulette online allowed the player to feel even more involved in the game and the player felt closer to the wheel as it spins. Online roulette also eliminated the the problems of weighting the roulette wheel.
The Roulette wheel has always been a symbol of class and represents more than just a game at the casino. It is a science that developed into an enthralling game, all from the small experiment and fascination of Blaise Pascal.
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