For Eudaemons in mythology, see Daemon. The words daemon and daimon (also spelled dæmon) are distinctive Greek spellings of demon used purposely today to distinguish the daemons of Greek mythology, good or malevolent supernatural beings between mortals and gods, such as inferior divinities and ghosts of dead heroes, from the Judeo-Christian usage demon, a malignant...

The Eudaemons were a small group headed by graduate physics students J. Doyne Farmer and Norman Packard at the University of California Santa Cruz in the late 1970s. The group's immediate objective was to find a way to beat roulette, but a loftier objective was to use the money made from roulette to fund a scientific community. The name of the group was inspired by the eudaemonism philosophy. American physicist and one of the founding fathers of chaos theory. ... The University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC or UC Santa Cruz) is a coeducational public university located in Santa Cruz, California. ... This page is about the game. ... The word eudaimonism comes from the Greek word for happiness (eudaimonia), and refers to any conception of ethics that puts human happiness and the complete life of the individual at the center of ethical concern. ...

During a summer the two students started doing their own research on a roulette which they had bought. Among the instruments which they used was a camera and an oscilloscope, to keep track of the motion of the roulette. Eventually they figured out a formula involving trigonometric functions and four variables, among them the period of rotation of the roulette and the period of rotation of the ball around the roulette. A Tektronix model 475A portable analogue oscilloscope, a very typical instrument of the late 1970s. ...

Since the calculations were very complicated, they decided to build a computer customized for the purpose of being fed data about the roulette and the ball and to return a prediction of which of the roulette's octants the ball would fall on. The computer was underwearable, designed to be invisible to an onlooker. It was small enough to fit inside a shoe. The input was by tapping the thumb finger on a micro-switch in the shoe. Then an electronic signal was relayed to a vibrotactile output system hidden behind the shirt, strapped to the chest, which had three solenoid actuators near the stomach which would indicate by vibrating either which of the eight octants of the roulette to place a bet on, or a ninth possibility: to not place a bet. In engineering, a solenoid is a mechanical device that converts energy into linear motion. ... An actuator is the mechanism by which an agent acts upon an environment. ... Black Entertainment Television (BET for short) is the first television network geared towards African-Americans. ...

It took two years to develop the computerized system. By 1978 it was working and the group went to Las Vegas to make money at it. Eventually the system was split between two persons: an observer and a bettor. The observer would tap input signals with the foot, the bettor would receive output signals underneath his/her shirt. The average profit was 44% for every dollar. However, there were problems: in one case the insulation failed and the bettor received electric shocks from the solenoids. But she kept placing bets, so the observer, who in this case was Doyne, left the table, so that the bettor would be forced to leave as well. Afterwards it turned out that the solenoid had burned a hole into her skin. Some members of the group had already left because of trouble juggling the academic schedule with the Eudaemonics, but the burning incident caused the two leaders to disband the group. Collectively they had managed to make about $10,000. 1978 was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1978 calendar). ...

As a science experiment, the group's objective was accomplished: to prove that there was a way of statistically predicting where a ball would fall in a roulette given some input data.

Source

The story of the Eudaemons was featured on the History Channel, in the Breaking Vegas program. The History Channel is a cable television channel, dedicated to the presentation of historical events and persons, often with frequent observations and explanations by noted historians as well as reenactors and witnesses to events, if possible. ... Breaking Vegas is a television show that covers the great lengths people have gone to make money, often illegally, from a casinos. ...

External links

• The Eudaemons (http://physics.ucsc.edu/people/eudaemons/eudaemons.html)
• The Eudaemons' shoe computer (http://wearcam.org/historical/node3.html)