“Maschine 1”, the only German casino computer is on display in the HNF. It was developed by Herrmann Krause and Rudolf Schönhardt, two physics students at the University of Bonn. In 1972, they used their microcomputer while playing Blackjack in French casinos and won Francs 30,000.
“Maschine 1” comprised an arithmetic unit with input keys, logic and memory chips and a transmitter. One player wore this under their clothing and entered the cards that had already been flipped over. With this information, the electronics calculated the probability of the following cards. The transmitter sent this to the receiver which was hidden in a prepared smoking pipe case. The second player read the numbers from tiny lamps.
In this way, the students improved the card counting possibilities in Blackjack. They benefited from the riffle shuffle that was common in France at that time.