The
History of Bingo
The
European roots of Bingo
It all started in
Italy a long time ago with “Lo Giocco de Lotto”, a lottery
game run by the state since its creation in 1530. The game migrated
to France in the 18th century where it was simply called “Lotto”.
It took the form of the bingo games we know today where players place
tokens on cards as numbers are called aloud. The game then spread across
Europe and took various forms. This is when the type of bingo game that
is played today in the United Kingdom appeared; cards were divided into
3 rows and 9 columns. Each card had 5 numbers per row and the cards
were grouped into sets of six (strips) where all 90 numbers were displayed.
The winner was the first to completely cover one of the 3 horizontal
rows. It is said that this game was the only form of gambling authorised
in the British Army (where it was known as “house” or “housy-housy”)
and in the Royal Navy (where it was called “Tombola”) in
the 19th century. But the name Bingo only appeared after the game migrated
to the USA.
The American game
of Bingo
At the beginning
of the 20th century, an American touring with a carnival in Germany
discovered the game of Lotto. He brought it back to America and altered
the game slightly. He named it Beano, because beans were used to cover
the numbers on the cards. He worked his game in country carnivals and
it was very popular. One night in December 1929, near Jacksonville,
Georgia, Edwin S. Lowe, a toy salesman from New York witnessed the popularity
of the game. He brought it back to New York and introduced the game
to his friends. While they were playing, one of his friends got so exited
when she won that she shouted “BINGO!” instead of Beano.
Bingo became the name of the game. Lowe authorised other companies across
the USA to copy his game as long as they paid him $1 and kept the name
of Bingo.
In God we trust
Lowe authorised
a Catholic priest from Pennsylvania to use bingo in order to raise church
funds. Bingo started being played in other churches and became extremely
popular. Tens of thousands of bingo games were played weekly by the
mid 30’s. Today bingo has a weekly turnover of around $100 million
dollars in North America alone.
