The first form of roulete was devised in 18th century France. Blaise Pascal introduced a primitive form of the game in the 17th century in his search for a perpetual motion machine. The wheel is believed to be a fusion of the English wheel games Roly-Poly, Reiner, Ace of Hearts, and E.O., the Italian board games of Hoca and Biribi, and “Roulete” from an already existing French board game of that name.

People have been playing the game in its present form since 1796 in Paris. Early descriptions of the game in its current form are found in a French novel La Roulete, ou le Jour by Jaques Lablee, who describes a roulete wheel in the Palais Royal in Paris in 1796. The book was published in 1801.

It was in Germany in 1843 that Frenchmen Franois and Louis Blanc introduced the first wheel with a single zero in order to compete against other casinos in the area who offered the usual wheel with the single and double zero.

In some forms of early American wheels – as shown in the 1886 Hoyle gambling books, there were numbers 1 through 28, plus a single zero, a double zero, and an American Eagle. According to Hoyle “the single 0, the double 0, and eagle are never bars; but when the ball falls into either of them, the banker sweeps every thing upon the table, except what may happen to be bet on either one of them, when he pays twenty-seven for one, which is the amount paid for all sums bet upon any single figure.”

During the 1800s, the game spread all over the U.S.A. and Europe, becoming one of the most famous and popular casino games of the time. The German government abolished gambling in the 1860s, forcing the Blanca family to move to the last place where a legal casino could be operated, in Monte Carlo. There they established a gambling mecca for the elite of Europe. It was in Monte Carlo that the single zero roulete wheel became the dominant game, and over the years it was exported around the world, except in the United States where the double zero wheel had maintained its command.

All of the numbers on the wheel add up to 666, the “Number of the Beast”. This spawned the legend that Franois Blanc bargained with the devil in order to obtain the secrets of roulete.

The French double zero wheel slowly spread north from New Orleans and from there it went west. In the west, due to excessive cheating by both gamblers and operators, the wheel was eventually moved to the top of the table in order to prevent devices being hidden inside the wheel. It was at this time that the betting layout was simplified. Slowly the game because Americanized, setting itself apart from the traditional French style. The French version had slowly evolved with style and leisure in Monte Carlo, catering to the rich and powerful, while the American game evolved in gambling dens across the new territories. The American style had simplified betting and fast action, with either the single or double zero wheel, and this is what now dominates in most casinos around the world.

Early in the 20th century, there were only two casino towns of note; Monte Carlo, which used the traditional single zero French wheel, and Las Vegas, which used the American double zero wheel. By the 1970s, casinos began to flourish around the world, and in 2008 there were several hundred casinos worldwide offering roulete games. The double zero wheel can be found in the U.S., the Caribbean, and South America, while the single zero wheel is dominant elsewhere.

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