Bingo is an ancient game that has enjoyed a great deal of popularity right from its inception; and the origins of bingo can be traced back to mid-sixteenth century Italy.
A lottery called Lo Giuoco del Lotto d’Italia, which is still being played every week, is the ancestor of modern bingo. In the late eighteenth century, the game caught the interest of elite French society, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Germans used it as an interesting tool to teach children spelling, mathematics and science.
Beano Becomes Bingo
When bingo came to America in the early twentieth century, it was called beano as dried beans were used to mark off the number numbers and the person who got full house shouted “Beano.” The game, which was immensely popular as a carnival game in Atlanta, was discovered by a toy merchant called Edwin S. Lowe, who had just established a brand new toy company that was not doing very well. The man who was conducting the game at the carnival told Lowe that he had come across the game in Germany, modified it slightly, and used it to make profits at the carnival.
Lowe taught his friends the game, and noticed that they soon became addicted to it. When one of his friends accidentally shouted “Bingo” instead of “Beano,” Lowe felt that he could market the game better if he called it Bingo.
Lowe did not patent his game, as a result of which a number of people created variants of the same game and began marketing them. Fortunately for them, Lowe was generous and allowed them to market their variants under the name of Bingo as long as they paid his an annual fee of a dollar.
Bingo as a Fundraiser
In 1934, thousands of players were playing bingo every week and spending over $90 million dollars on bingo in North America. The priest of the Wilkes-Barres Church hit upon the idea of using bingo to raise funds to solve his church’s financial problems and purchased a large number of Lowe’s bingo tickets. The priest, however, felt disappointed when the game generated around 5 – 6 winners. He approached Lowe and discussed the problem with him.
Realizing that the game could be conducted on a large scale for profit, Lowe hired the services of Prof. Carl Leffler of the University of Columbia and requested his to create more bingo tickets with different number combinations. The professor successfully created around 6,000 bingo tickets, but the stress drove him insane.
The game was increasingly used to raise funds for charity after it successfully solved the problems of Wilkes-Barres Church. This led Lowe to publish the first bingo guidebook, following which he began publishing a bingo newsletter, which got 37,000 subscribers.
The demand for bingo rose, and the largest bingo game ever played was in Teaneck Armory at New York, where 60,000 players played and the winners received automobile for prizes. Today, bingo is played not only on land, but also at online bingo sites.
This article continues here: The History of Bingo: Part 2 - The Rise of Online Bingo
