Wheels and More Dice

The game of roulette has been around for over 200 years; several games throughout Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries contributed to what has been standardized in the last century. Historians regularly credit mathematician (and inventor, writer, philosopher, and physicist) Blaise Pascal’s experiments with perpetual motion as the impetus behind the wheel itself, and the game that most resembles current roulette started to become famous in Paris during the late 1700s. Indeed, the name itself comes from the French word for “little wheel.”