| Joseph Jaggers (1830 -- 1892) was a
British engineer, popularly known as
the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.
Jaggers gained his practical experience of mechanics working in Yorkshire's cotton manufacturing industry. He extended his experience to the behaviour of a roulette wheel, speculating that its outcomes were not purely random numbers but that mechanical imbalances might result in biases towards particular outcomes.
In 1873, Jaggers hired six clerks clandestinely to record the outcomes of the six
roulette wheels at the Beaux-Arts Casino
at Monte Carlo, Monaco. He
discovered that one of the wheels showed a clear bias, in
that nine of the numbers occurred more frequently than the others. Exploiting this characteristic, Jagger made a profit of
USD 450,000 before the casino management intervened to
modify the wheels.
In 1891, Fred Gilbert wrote a popular song, The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo about Jaggers's
exploits.
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