Roulette
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Roulette. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a game of chance which from the end of the 18th century till the beginning of 1838 reigned supreme over all others in Paris. It continued to be played at German watering-places till 1872, when it ceased in terms of an act passed four years before. Roulette then found a home at Monaco. It is played on a table of an oblong form, covered with green cloth, which has in its center a cavity of a little more than two feet in diameter, in the shape of a punch bowl. This cavity, which has several copper bands round its sides at equal distances from each other, has its sides fixed, but the bottom is movable round an axis placed in the center of the cavity, the handle by which motion is communicated being a species of cross or capstan of copper fixed on the upper extremity of the axis. Round the circumference of this movable bottom are 38 holes, painted in black and red alternately, with the first 36 numbers, and a single and double zero; and these 38 symbols are also figured at each end of the table in order that the players may place their stakes on the chance they select. Along the margin of the table and at each end of it are painted six words-pair, passe, noir, impair, manque, rouge. ROUMANIA. See RUMANIA. ROUMELIA. See BULGARIA.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
roo-let', a gambling device. An ivory ball is laid upon a revolving disk about which it rolls until it is thrown into one of thirty-six compartments around the edge. The players bet as to which of the compartments the ball will enter. This they do by laying their money, or chips purchased from the owner of the machine, by the pocket on which they desire to stake their money. If the ball enters some other pocket, the money is lost. If it enters the pocket designated, the banker pays the better thirty-six times the amount of money staked. One or two blank pockets are reserved for the benefit of the roulette banker who owns the machine. It is a fascinating form of gambling by which many fortunes have been lost. See Monte Carlo ; Cassino
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The mechanism Collier's described in 1921 is essentially the machine still in use: a spinning bowl, an ivory or teflon ball, and bets placed on pair, impair, rouge, noir, passe and manque. What has collapsed is the geography. In 1921 Roulette was an outlaw driven from Paris and the German spas to a single refuge at Monaco; Nevada legalised casino gambling in 1931, Atlantic City followed in 1978, and roulette is now played legally in hundreds of jurisdictions and, since the late 1990s, on computer screens and live-streamed video tables. The one detail worth correcting is the wheel itself: Collier's 38 pockets with a zero and double zero is the American layout, whose house edge is 5.26 per cent, while the European wheel Monaco used has 37 pockets and a single zero, halving the edge to 2.70 per cent.
Written for this edition, 2026.