History of Bingo

Bingo Roots

The game of Bingo is based on the concept of a lottery and shares similar features such as a set number of random numbers that are drawn and checked using a game card. There are conflicting opinions to its exact origins; however the game can be traced to the Italian National Lottery, Lo Giuoco del Lotto d’Italia, of the early 16th century. The game of Lotto was adopted into most parts of Europe during the 1700s, where it attracted a youthful, chic culture in France, Germany and England. In 1778 it was reported in the French press that Le Lotto had captured the fantasy of the intelligentsia.

During the 1700s the Lotto game card developed into a format similar to the one used for Bingo today. The game card was made up of three rows and nine columns. Each horizontal row had five numbered squares and four blank ones. The first column contained three numbers ranging from 1 to 10, the second column 11 to 20 etc, up to 90. No two Lotto cards were alike. Chips numbered 1 to 90 completed the playing equipment. The game was then played as it is today, with the first player to cover a horizontal row being the winner.

In the 1800s educational Lotto games became popular. A German Lotto game of the 1850s was designed to teach children their multiplication tables. Other examples of educational Lotto games include: ‘Spelling Lotto’, ’Animal Lotto’, and ‘Historical Lotto’.

Beano

The European Lotto game was picked up by an American travelling with a carnival in Germany during the 1920s. The game was brought back to the U.S. and adapted slightly to become the game Beano, which was played using dried beans. This game in turn was picked up by a struggling New York toy salesman, named Edwin Lowe, during The Great Depression of the 1930s. Lowe stumbled across a carnival in Jacksonville, Georgia by chance when travelling to a motel. He immediately recognized the engrossing nature of the game. Beano was mainly used as a form of trade at fairs and carnivals where prizes such as cakes, meats and vegetables were won.

Beano Becomes Bingo

Returning to his home in New York, Lowe bought some dried beans and some numbered rubber stamps and held a Beano party at his apartment. It soon became clear that the audience were hugely excited and during the game one player became more and more excited as she marked of numbers from her game card. At the call of the final number the player jumped up and instead of yelling “Beano!” She stuttered “B-B-Bingo!”

From this point onwards Lowe knew he had discovered a game that could revive his fortunes and started to invest time and money into the project. The earliest Lowe Bingo game came in two variations – a twelve card set purchased for one dollar and a twenty-four card set for two dollars. The game was an immediate success and put Lowe’s company back on its feet.

The name ‘Bingo’ was never trademarked by Lowe as the game itself had come out of the public domain, instead Lowe simply asked his imitators and competitors to pay him a dollar a year and to call their games Bingo.

After several months of being on sale for two dollars, Lowe was approached by an enterprising priest who had been using Bingo in a bid to raise money to save his church. The priest had used the game often but noticed that the game produced a lot of winners, reducing the profits for both the players and the church. To this end Lowe decided to employ Professor Carl Leffler of Columbia University to develop 6000 new Bingo cards in non-repeating number groups. This feat was achieved at the cost of one hundred dollars and enabled the game of Bingo to flourish.