Bingo History - The Origins Of Bingo Games
The origins of bingo, as with most games, is shrouded in the
mists of history. However, we can trace the idea back to the
1500's where the Italians invented a lottery game to be played
'en masse' rather like Bingo is today. "Lo Giuoco del Lotto
d'Italia" was the very first state run lottery which proved to
be so popular it is still played today.
Perhaps closer to the game we know today however is the French
game of "Le Lotto" which was derived from the Italian
counterpart. This game was very popular with French noblemen
during the 18th century. This game involved a caller drawing out
wooden discs number from one to ninety from a bag and calling
them out the the players. Each player had a game board divided
into nine rows and three columns of numbers and the winner would
be the person to mark off all the numbers in one row.
Later cersions of the Le Lotto appeared in Germany but this
time, it was used not for gambling purposes but rather to teach
children their times tables. Today, more of the same can be
found on the children's games market including such things as
spelling bingo with, of course, all of the gambling elements
removed.
However, the first example of bingo in its modern form appeared
during the late 1920's when a New York toy salesman stumbled
upon an addictive fairground game and had a brainwave. Edwin S.
Lowe came across the game of "Beano" at a carnival in Georgia.
The players at this game had wooden cards full of numbers and a
set of dried beans. Every time the caller drew out a number they
would cover it up with a bean, the winner being the one to mark
off all the numbers in a straight line either diagonally,
horizontally or vertically. So popular was this game than Lowe
never actually got a chance to play but the idea of marketing
this to the mass market was formed right there and then.
Hurrying back to New York he quickly made his own replica of the
carnival game and invited friends over to play at a specially
organised party. It was just a popular there in his appartment
to the point where one member got so excited that she stumbled
over the call of "Beano!" to signify she had won and shouted out
"BINGO!" instead. The name stuck and when Lowe produced the
first commercial version of the game retailing for just $1
that's the name it was marketed with.
Bingo of course never stayed as a parlour game but soon made
it's way into being a large multiplayer social gambling event we
see today. How it got that way is, unlikely as it sounds, due in
large part to the efforts of a Pensylvanian priest! The priest
needed to find a fundraising event for his church and saw the
game of bingo as being the ideal way to do it. He set up
large-scale bingo game events with hundreds of players instead
of the handful the original game had been designed for and the
idea really took off.
Unfortunately, each game now had tens of winners instead of a
few so he commissioned a mathematician to create cards with 6000
unique number combinations, a task which took several months by
hand as there were no computers to help back then. Once finished
however the game of bingo really took off in it's modern form to
the point where in 1934, just a few years after bingo first hit
the mass market, there was over 10,000 games being played per
week across America. Now of course, bingo is a multi-million
dollar industry across the world and can be played online 24
hours a day if it takes your fancy.