Bingo History

It all started in Italy back in 1530 when the government at that time was short of money and needed to find a way to bring in more revenue from the public without raising the taxes. So they came up the idea to create a game they called Lo Giucco del Lotto D’Italia which became an instant success amongst the people. It became so popular that it spread to other European countries and in late 1700s the French introduced a similar game that they called Le Lotto. This game was very similar to the Italian version but it was only played by upper class people and women were never allowed to participate. In 1880 the game reached Germany where it was used as a fun game in schools to help children learn to solve math problems.

The game spread to many other European countries over the next few decades. And even though the game became increasingly popular it had very little unified structure and also lacked a common name. This all came to change in 1929 when Edwin Lowe, who was an American toy salesman was introduced to the game and commercialised it to the social game of Bingo that it is today. It was at a carnival in Atlanta, Georgia that Lowe came across the game that was called Beano at the time. The players who participated in a game of Beano used lima or pinto beans to mark the called numbers and had to shout out “Beano” when they filled up either a vertical, diagonal or a horizontal line. Lowe saw that the game had potential and decided to introduce it to his own circle of friends back in his home state. The friends came to enjoy the game and when one of these people won a game she got so excited that she shouted out “Bingo” instead of Beano and so it came to be called Bingo.

In the beginning Lowe was selling his Bingo games at a dollar and it became an instant success amongst the customers who included a priest in Pennsylvania who started using the game of Bingo as a fundraising tool for his church. There was one problem that the priest encountered with the game though, the number of combinations on the current cards were very limited which meant that there were almost always multiple winners in all the games he hosted. The priest decided to approach Lowe for help. Lowe contacted Carl Leffler who was a mathematician from Colombia University and with the help from the professor he managed to produce a bingo card that had over 6000 different combinations which meant that it increased the games possibilities. The sad part is that Leffler went insane from the work with the number combinations while Lowe went on to become very rich from the game of Bingo that he invented.

And that is the full story of the history of Bingo as we know it today. It started out in Italy in 1530 and was finally brought to America by Edwin Lowe in 1929 where it became what it is today. Many churches are still using Bingo as a means of bringing in extra revenue and in Italy they still run the national lottery every week. And finally we have to mention how popular this game has become on the internet with the hundreds of online Bingo rooms that we have today.

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