One component without which the roulette game cannot be played is the roulette wheel.  A little trick with it can change the odds heavily towards House advantage.  On the other hand carefully built up strategies relating to roulette wheel can also tilt the game a little against House advantage. Roulette wheel has evolved over the years to the present day form.
Exact origin of roulette wheels are still subject matter of debate.  However it is also widely accepted in all quarters that the roulette wheel evolved from the combination of a few games.  These games are hoca, boule, and even odd.  If you peep in to the history you will come across instances where the Greeks and Romans used spinning shields as well as the chariot wheels for games dependent on chances.  Roulette originated in France towards the end of the 18th century and blossomed into a full fledged gambling game in the first part of the 19th Century.
Formal introduction of the game of roulette took place in Paris in the year 1765 when Gabriel Ie Sartine, a police lieutenant from Paris initiated it.  Thereafter it spread rapidly to other cities across Europe like the Spa and Badennaden and to Montarlo. It gradually became fashionable among the aristocrats in the society and such people started frequenting the gaming table.  Gaming historians believe that the word “roulette” evolved from the French name “mullette” that denotes small wheel. In the process at some point of time the game also reached USA where it was adopted with some variations like having 31 numbers instead of 28 and two zeros in place of the traditional one zero in the European version of the game.  One thing however did not change.  It was the faithful roulette wheel. The evolution was long and sturdy, reaching the present for of additional American roulette game.
Over the years roulette wheel has undergone many evolutionary changes. In any case it is not the wheel that was introduced by Sartine in 1765 or those used prior to that during the historical era. They have not only varied in size, shape, and forms but also in spinning time and in many other ways.  A plethora of ingenious devices were invented and added to the wheel. For instance Spiel casino of Frankfurt, Germany started using 24- roulette.  It was a heavy weight device.  At 250 Kilograms of solid steel bowl and 26 receptacles centered and a solid billiard ball was rolled around it.  The game was more based on the skill of the player in using the wheel rather than on chance. Ball moved in elliptical path and finally rolled into one of the slots.  That would be the winning number.
That was not the only invention of the time.  Several other roulette wheels, many of the curious looking and unique in nature, made their appearances from time to time.  Some of them had numbered balls while others had playing cards for the wheel.  Both standard and modified wheels have been used over the years to great success as the game goes on gaining more and more popularity.  For instance Loutraki, one of the unlicensed operators tried to by pass the legislations offering the game of roulette as a game of skill and not chance.
Electronic roulette wheel ordinarily encompasses wide ranges of devices and are experiencing spectacular growth and evolution.  While the early roulette wheels were made in such way that they could be modified easily to give House advantage, today the situation has completely changed.  Today the wheels cannot be tampered in this manner and there are also legislations against unfair practice. While in the past the wheels could rig using magnets or special cheating devices, roulette wheels to day are always under the scanner and casino owners will not try much in fear of losing the players since there are numerous casino houses available online and offline.
