The Italian Lottery Game is played with 90 numbers, like some
bingo games, and sometimes features names of Italian cities
at the top of cards
instead of
the five letters in BEANO or BINGO. A popular parlor game called
Lotto was developed based on the Italian National Lottery. The
game was introduced to France in the 1770's where it was called "Le
Lotto” and was played by the wealthy for entertainment. This
game strikes a strong resemblance with today's version of the bingo
game. Three horizontal and nine vertical rows formed the basis
of the "bingo" card and players would cover their numbers
as they were drawn
until
an entire horizontal row was covered - hence the winner.
Educational Bingo Card History Begins
The Germans also played an historic version of the bingo game
in the 1800s. They used it as a child's game to help students
learn math,
spelling
and history, a very popular use of the bingo game and bingo cards
to this day. See Bingo
Cards.
Bingo History Begins With Beano
In recent bingo history, a variation of the German lotto
game was introduced at carnivals in America in the 1920’s,
played with beans to cover numbers on a card. When a participant
covered
a row
of numbers, they shouted “beano” and
received a prize.
The Role of Edwin S. Lowe In Bingo History
Bingo history in America truly begins when New York toy salesman
Edwin S. Lowe stumbled upon the beano game at a carnival in
Georgia
in 1929.
He later
demonstrated
a home-made
version to friends, where a woman at the event accidentally shouted
out “bingo” instead of “beano” when she
had completed a row. "I cannot describe the strange sense
of elation which that girl's cry brought to me," Lowe said. "All
I could think of was that I was going to come out with this game,
and it was going to be called Bingo!"
The First Packaged Bingo Game Is Marketed
Bingo history continues as Mr. Lowe soon packaged the materials
for a home-version of the game and took it to market. Containing
only 24 bingo
cards,
it was soon
discovered that with a large group of players, the bingo game produced
too many winners. This problem was brought to him by a Catholic
priest from Pennsylvania who wanted to use large bingo games to
raise money for the church fund.
Not Enough Bingo Card Combinations
A pivotal event in bingo history occurred when
Lowe hired Columbia University
math
professor Carl Leffler to help him increase the number of combinations
in bingo cards. By 1930, Leffler had created 6,000 different bingo
cards with non-repeating number combinations. There are 5.52+ E26
(more than 552 million billion billion) possible combinations that
could exist - any one of which would be a legal bingo card.
The History of Bingo Continues
With the bingo game becoming popular as a fundraising activity
for churches, bingo became increasingly popular throughout
America during this period of bingo history. By 1934, an
estimated 10,000 bingo games were played weekly, and the popularity
has not waned to this day. The advent of the Internet and playing
games on the home computer has only added to the popularity of
the bingo game.
