The History of Bingo: How It All Began

We all have known and played the popular lottery game of Bingo, but how did this game actually begin? The modern Bingo game, that people play today can be traced as far back as the 16th century in Rennaissance Italy. The Italian National Lottery was organized in 1530, and has continued its tradition to this day, giving birth to the modern Italian State lottery, which remains indispensable to nation's economy.

Bingo's beginnings can also be traced from the 18th century. At this time, the Italian lotto spread over to France, and attracted the interest of the French intelligentsia. The game that developed during this period involved using a playing card that had three horizontal rows, and nine columns.

Each row had five numbered squares and four blank squares arranged at random. The columns had numbers from 1 to 10 in the first row, 11 to 20 in the second row, and so forth, until 90. Each lotto card was different, while chips were also used, and these were numbered from 1 to 90. each player had one card, and a caller would stand by, draw a numbered token from a cloth bag and read the number aloud. Each number that was called out would be covered on the player's card. The first player to cover a horizontal row won.

The lotto game continued in Germany in the 1850s, and emerged as an educational game, used by the Germans to teach their children the multiplication tables. This educational lotto became diverse and gave birth to spelling, animal and historical lotto games. We see such games even today; as a matter of fact, there exists a lotto game that features Sesame Street Muppets. More than just a lottery game, this kind of lotto became useful in teaching children the numbers.

In the 20th century, a bankrupted toy salesman Edwin Lowe, chanced upon this European lotto game at a country carnival. He observed the game, and took particular notice of how it had arrested the interest of the players who played the game with intensity. It was called "Beano," as beans were being used to cover numbers on the card whenever the pitchman called forth a number. Excited by the fact that the game was so popular in the carnival circuit, Lowe decided to bring the game over to his own hometown in New York. The game used dried beans, numbered cardboards and a stamp.

As his friends began to play the Beano game with the same intensity as Lowe had earlier observed from his carnival adventure, one woman, who was on the verge of covering her first horizontal row, leaped up from her seat and shouted Bingo! instead of "Beano" which is what the players were supposed to shout out when they had reached a win. The name stuck and soon, Lowe marketed the Bingo game, which took America by storm.

Nevertheless, Lowe was not able to trademark this game as he had merely adopted it from the public domain. Lowe's competitors flourished and made variations of the Bingo game, which Lowe did not contest. He merely asked them to pay him a royalty of one dollar annually. His competitors used the same name, Bingo. And that is how the remarkable game of Bingo came about.