The History of Bingo
The game of Bingo is neither a new nor an American invention. In fact, game historians have traced Bingo back to an Italian lottery called “Lo Giuoco del Lotto D’Italia, which was played as early as 1530 – and which is still played today!
About 400 years later, in 1929, the game had finally reached North America and it is said that the first Bingo game ever played on U.S. soil was at a carnival outside Atlanta, Georgia. At that time, a man in a carnival stand just pulled numbers out of a simple cigar box and the players marked the corresponding numbers on their cards with dried beans. The first player to get a horizontal, vertical or diagonal line of beans on his or her card would yell “Beano!” and win a small Kewpie doll!
The game of “Beano”, as it was called then, caught the eye of toy salesman Edwin S. Lowe from New York. He became mesmerized by the game and tried to play it that night, but could not get a seat at the packed “Beano” counter. After the “caller” closed the game for the night, he told Lowe that he had run across the game while traveling in Germany. He had thought that this game which the Germans had called “Lotto” would make a great carnival game and on his return to America, he had just made a few adjustments to it and renamed the game “Beano”.
Mr. Lowe returned to New York, but not before he had bought some dried beans, a rubber stamp with numbers on it and some cardboard. He then invited some acquaintances over for a friendly game of “Beano”. His guests loved the game. One lady in particular was very excited by it and as her last number was called, she jumped out of her seat. But instead of yelling “Beano!” she accidentally yelled “Bingo!”
Lowe liked the word “Bingo” and renamed the game. He then started to manufacture small Bingo sets, which he sold from his toy store. A short time thereafter, a Catholic priest from Pennsylvania approached Lowe about using Bingo as a mean of raising church funds. Lowe agreed but in order to accomplish this, he sought the services of a professor of mathematics at Columbia University, Carl Leffler. Lowe’s request was that the professor would develop 6,000 new Bingo cards with non repeating number groups. The professor agreed and by 1930 he had completed the task. The E.S. Lowe Company now had its 6,000 Bingo cards, but some say that the math professor went insane shortly thereafter. Although the name Bingo could have been trademarked, the game itself had little chance of being protected. Imitators soon popped up like mushrooms out of the ground, but Lowe was very courteous about the whole thing. He just asked his competitors to pay him a dollar a year, and to call their games Bingo too.
The game’s popularity continued to grow and by 1934 an estimated 10,000 Bingo games were played weekly. Today, over 70 years later, more than $90 million are spent on Bingo every week, in the U.S. alone.
