Where it
all began
Let's be honest, the question "Where did
bingo originate from.?" has been contemplated, at least once by
every bingo player the world over. And there are millions of players
around the world. Bingo players claim to lay title to the "Worlds
Most Popular Game" and there is every reason to believe them.
Bingo is played in every continent and in
90% of the Worlds Countries although the exact origins of the game
are not exactly definable. Bingo goes by other names like, Housie
Housie, Tombola, but the idea and outcome of the game is the same,
i.e. Cover a row of numbers with counters before any other player
can do so to win a prize.
As for bingo's origins we do have some
leads. It is similar to the Italian game of Tombola which was played
once per year on Christmas Eve by families playing together, who
upon winning would shout when they had made a row first. The
traditional game players used cards covered using beans [Fagioli] or
pieces of orange peel. Modern tombola cards are made of plastic with
slots which can be closed down when a number is called.
It is believed that current day bingo may
have come from an Italian Lottery Game, Lo Giuoco Del Lotto Ditalia
which originated in 1530 and is still played today. In the late
1700's "Le Lotto" appeared in France. It's form and style is similar
to the "Bingo" game we know today. Using playing cards, tokens and
numbers read aloud. In 1800 the German Education System adapted
Lotto to for lottery games to teach children muliplication
tables.
From there we take a time jump to the next
"Bingo" development located in the United States where in 1929 a
game called "Beano" was played at a carnival near Atlanta, Georgia.
A toy salesmen watched the excitement generate and was so taken by
it, he took the game to New York to introduce it to his friends. The
toy salesman's name was Edwin Lowe. Legend has it that one of Mr.
Lowe's players yelled "Bingo" in her excitement instead of "Beano"
when she made her first row.
The game was so popular that Edwin Lowe's
bingo started with Lowe asking competitors to pay him $1 per year to
allow them to call their games bingo as well. Later Lowe
commissioned Carl Leffer an elderly math's professor at Columbia
University to develop his bingo system. By late 1930 Leffer had
developed 6000 bingo cards with non-repeating number groups. He had
successfully completed the commissioned work and then went
insane.
Edwin Lowe promoted Bingo, printing cards
day and night. He commented one day that "We use more newsprint than
the New York Times.", which had a reported 5 million readers at the
time. The game further spread in the U.S. when Lowe began to work
with a Catholic priest from Pennsylvania to establish the game.
After a few years, bingo had spread up and down the East coast of
America and was heading West.
By 1934 it is estimated that 10,000 bingo
games were played every week and that was at the height of the
Depression. By 1995 the American public would spend $88 million each
week on bingo.
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