The History of Bingo
Roots of Bingo
Bingo is a direct descendant of the game 'Lo Giuoco del Lotto d'Italia', that has been famous in Italy since 1530. Even today, this immensely popular National Lottery is still played there every Saturday with a yearly contribution of more than 75 million US dollars.
By the late 1770s the game became popular in France, where it was called 'Le Lotto' and playing cards, tokens and the reading out of numbers were added to the game. |  |
The playing cards used in this version of the game were divided into three horizontal and nine vertical rows. The vertical rows contained the numbers from 1 to 90, while the horizontal rows had 5 numbered and 4 blank squares in a random arrangement. Not two of these cards were alike. Players were dealt a playing card and then a caller would draw a numbered token from a bag and announce the number. The players would then cover the number if it appeared on their Lotto card and the first player to complete a horizontal row was the lucky winner.
In the 1800s Lotto became popular in Germany, where it was also used for educational purposes to teach children math, spelling, animal names and history.
From Beano to Bingo
 Lotto made its way to the USA in 1929 via a carnival showman who came across the game while touring Germany.
In the USA, Lotto was renamed 'Beano' and it was played at country fairs with dried beans, cardboard sheets and a rubber stamp.
A dealer would randomly draw numbered discs from a cigar box and announce the numbers while the players would mark their cards with beans and yell 'Beano!' once they had marked all numbers on their card.
Edwin S. Lowe, a toy salesman from New York, was watching this game at a carnival near Jacksonville, Georgia, in December 1929 and noticed how excited and engaged the players were.
Lowe took the idea of the game with him to New York where he conducted Beano with his friends. One of his friends was so excited to have won that she accidentally yelled out 'Bingo' instead of 'Beano' and history was made.
Lowe hired an elderly math professor, Carl Leffler, to help him increase the number of combinations in Bingo cards. By 1930, they had invented 6,000 different variations.
Lowe's Bingo was an incredible success. Several months after Bingo hit the market, a Catholic priest from Pennsylvania approached Edwin Lowe about using Bingo to raise church funds. When Bingo games started being played in churches it became even more popular and by the 1940s Bingo was all over the nation.
Today more than 90 million dollars are spent on Bingo each week in the USA alone.
In the UK, Bingo became highly popular in the 1960s, when the Gaming Act passed by Parliament permitted Bingo games in members only clubs.
Bingo Online
The latest development in Bingo games is 'Online Bingo' which allows players to play free Bingo at anytime on the internet. |
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