Roulette Computers: Hidden Devices That Predict Spins

2 comments

• RagnarD 2 minutes ago
  There's a classic book from 1985 about an early, successful attempt to make one.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eudaemonic_Pie
• dunconian 51 minutes ago
  Fun fact: roulette computers were (arguably) the first wearable computer [0] in 1961 and co-invented by Claude Shannon of information theory fame.

  [0] https://mitmuseum.mit.edu/collections/object/2007.030.014

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  • leoc 39 minutes ago
    Yhe initiator of the scheme, Edward O. Thorp, was also a father of modern blackjack card counting, and wrote the definitive book about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_counting#History_of_blackj... . "The Invention of the First Wearable Computer" http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/graphics/courses/mobwear/resourc... is Thorp's paper about the blackjack-computer scheme.

    (Another famous '70s card counter, Ken Uston https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Uston ended up writing one of the very earliest video game guides, Mastering Pac-Man (it came out in 1981, the same year as Tom Hirschfeld's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Master_the_Video_Games .) Apparently one of its readers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semyon_Dukach discovered Uston's blackjack books as a result, got into blackjack and so ended up on the later, late-'70s-to-early-2000s MIT Blackjack Team led by J.P. Massar .)

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    • dunconian 27 minutes ago
      A great reference, thanks! I can imagine both Thorp and Shannon desperately trying to solder loose wires in a toilet booth could make a great awkward scene in a future film